Law Commons^™

Wisdom Of The Ages Or Dead-Hand Control? Patentable Subject Matter For Diagnostic Methods After In Re Bilski, Rebecca Sue Eisenberg

Law & Economics Working Papers

For a quarter century following the landmark 1980 decision of the Supreme Court in Diamond v. Chakrabarty, inventions and discoveries in biotechnology research appeared to be eligible for patent protection, assuming they meet the statutory standards for patent protection. The Supreme Court reopened the issue of patentable subject matter in 2005 when it granted certiorari in Laboratory Corporation v. Metabolite on the question of whether a method of diagnosing vitamin deficiency by observing a biomarker was unpatentable as a “basic scientific relationship.” Although the Court later dismissed the case without reaching a decision on the merits, since that time the …