Court dismisses second appeal to overturn ruling on corporate human gene patenting

ABC Yvonne D'Arcy has lost her second appeal to overturn a court ruling on human gene patening.

The full bench of the Federal Court has thrown out an appeal against a ruling allowing private companies to patent human genes.

Last year breast cancer survivor Yvonne D'Arcy lodged an appeal after two bio-tech companies were granted the patent to a hereditary gene associated with an increased risk of cancer.

A court had previously ruled the patent applied because the genetic material needed to be extracted from the body to be tested.

Ms D'Arcy, from Brisbane, argued the genes existed in nature, so were discovered rather than invented.

She said she launched the case even though she herself did not have the BRCA1 gene.

Her case was against US-based company Myriad Genetics and Melbourne-based company Genetic Technologies.

The full bench of the Federal Court in Sydney has today dismissed her second appeal in the case, stating that "expressions such as the work of nature or the laws of nature are unhelpful when dealing with claims of a kind in this case".

"One may distinguish between discovery of a piece of abstract information without suggestion of a practical application to a useful end, on the one hand, and a useful result produced by doing something which has not been done by that procedure before, on the other," the five-judge panel said.

Ms D'Arcy's lawyer Rebecca Gilsenen from Maurice Blackburn said the judgment was disappointing.

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Court dismisses second appeal to overturn ruling on corporate human gene patenting