Hacker News Reader

Yes, it's about time! But I don't understand the cDNA-is-patentable portion of the ruling -- if I isolate human RNA (finally declared to be a work of nature), and make cDNA off of it using RNA transcriptase (did I get that right?), then that's somehow patentable, but the DNA/RNA that it's based off of isn't? That seems contradictory

View on HN

Reverse transcriptase. mRNA, and therefore cDNA, could have things like introns excised.

Still, that's like saying "A zip file can't be copyrighted, but whoever manages to copy the contents once it's been decoded by a third party can copyright the contents." The judgement does not seem to understand that cDNA libraries could be constructed relatively trivially nowadays with hardly a creative thought, with apologies to those who earned their postgraduate degrees doing such a thing.

I think the argument is that if you can show that the cDNA is merely a copy of a product of nature, it can't be patented. On the other hand, as per Bowman v. Monsanto, transgenic organisms can be patented.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com