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The thorny and unresolved question of whether life itself can be patented may come again before the U.S. Supreme Court, if it accepts a motion filed Friday by Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog. (H/T to David Jensen's California Stem Cell Report.)
The issue isn't a new one either for the consumer group or the court. Consumer Watchdog launched its challenge of a patent on human stem cells issued to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, or WARF, in 2006. Since then the battle has been waged before the U.S. Patent Office, which overturned the patent then reinstated a narrower version; and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which hears patent appeals.
The group has challenged the patent on two grounds: first, that the work covered wasn't novel or original, and second, that the Supreme Court has ruled that a "product of nature" can't be patented.
That ruling came in 2013, in a case involving laboratory-isolated DNA. Even then, however, the court left the door open for patents of some biological products, notably "composite DNA,"...