At first blush, it would be tough to overstate the importance of this ruling. I need to sit down with the actual decision to be sure, but this seems as though it could have wide impact on those who discover a gene and then feel entitled to profit from it. At the same time, it seems a gameable ruling. For example, if the Whitehead folks had performed a knockdown assay, and thus demonstrated a method of modulating that specific protein, would that have been sufficient for this court? If so, or if something similar would be allowed, then this ruling will have only a modest impact going forward. Anyways, IANAL (but I have discovered genes); I need to read the full decision before I ramble on anymore.