CHEO launches lawsuit against owners of gene patent

By Sheryl Ubelacker, The Canadian Press Published Monday, November 3, 2014 12:29PM EST Last Updated Monday, November 3, 2014 12:35PM EST

TORONTO -- A Canadian hospital is launching a court challenge with the ultimate goal of invalidating patents on human genes, saying such protection can adversely affect the health of patients and boost the country's health-care costs.

Lawyers for the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, or CHEO, were in the process early Monday of filing the challenge in Federal Court in Ottawa, arguing that genes and other segments of the human genome should not be subject to patents for commercial or any other purposes.

"The core position really is that no one should be able to patent human DNA," said Alex Munter, president and CEO of the Ottawa-based CHEO. "It would be like patenting water or air."

Companies or other institutions that hold patents on genes or snippets of DNA and own the rights to diagnostic tests developed using that genetic information have a monopoly on what can be done with the information.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that naturally occurring human DNA cannot be patented, siding with advocates who argued that the multibillion-dollar biotechnology industry should not have exclusive control over genetic information found inside the human body.

But in Canada, there has been no similar court challenge to the country's Patent Act -- and hence no ruling, said Richard Gold, a professor of law at McGill University in Montreal.

"There's considerable lack of clarity in Canada, especially after the U.S. decision about exactly what can be patented," said Gold, who is consulting pro bono on the case, but is not involved in the actual court challenge.

"So we have companies not knowing whether their patents are valid. We have hospitals and governments not willing to take the risk, because it would cost a lot to defend one of these actions," he said, referring to potential law suits based on patent infringement.

"To take the risk, they may be violating the patents."

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CHEO launches lawsuit against owners of gene patent