#6: LAWSUITS: Maryland Wins on DNA Testing; Sequenom Loses on Diagnostic Patent

#6: LAWSUITS: Maryland Wins on DNA Testing; Sequenom Loses on Diagnostic Patent

A divided U.S. Supreme Court in June sided with the state of Maryland, and much of the nation’s law enforcement community, by ruling yesterday that authorities can take the DNA of criminal suspects upon arrest but before they are convicted of a crime. A 5–4 high-court majority sided with Maryland officials, who maintained that the state acted properly when it collected DNA by swabbing the cheek of Alonzo Jay King, Jr., when he was arrested in 2009, a year after the state expanded DNA sample collection to include suspects of felony first-degree assault. King was arrested on that charge, later dropped, as well as a misdemeanor or second-degree assault charge of which he was initially convicted. In dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia said the taking of DNA samples from persons not convicted of crimes violated the Fourth Amendment by searching for evidence of a crime without a basis for belief of guilt or incrimi¬nating evidence.

In October, Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California invalidated via summary judgment a Sequenom-licensed patent covering the detection of fetal cell-free DNA in the bloodstream of pregnant women. Judge Illston upheld a challenge from Ariosa Diagnostics, declaring that U.S. Patent No. 6,258,540 covered patent-ineligible subject matter—namely the presence of fetal DNA in the mother’s blood, which the judge said fell into the natural-phenomenon exemption from patentability under Section 101 of the U.S. Patent Code. Sequenom—which has said it will appeal the decision—used the patent to protect its MaterniT21 Plus noninvasive prenatal diagnostic test, which unlike older techniques such as amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling doesn’t carry the same risk of miscarriage.

More

Leave a reply