Muddying the Natural (Patent) Waters

In the past couple of years (see for example the Prometheus decision). The Supreme Court has issued a series of rulings that attempted to clarify what is and is not patentable. Unfortunately, the result has been the exact opposite, with court decisions creating chaos and confusion over what is the proper subject matter of patent applications.

The USPTO has issued proposed rules that appear not only to take the SCOTUS decisions at face value, but expand them to a great extent by declaring vast tracts of what had previously been patentable as out of bounds. An article on Nature.com earlier this month decries the likely outcomes.

The piece estimates that "almost half the drugs approved in the United States from 1981 to 2010 would have been rejected under these guidelines". While I am still concerned about overpriced medicines and their consequences, it's still likely that in the absence of some form of protection these medicines would not have been developed. It's possible that the Patent Office will implement less draconian interpretations, but even so I cannot see an easy way out of this thicket.