I don't believe these things work the way you are assuming they do. Unjust behavior by the part of big corporations like Prometheus need to be stopped at the root and at first sight.

Please never hope that the triumph of someone over you in argument, specially one that that gives them a new weapon to fight you, will eventually and reliably become a weakness in their defenses.

I'll try to explain why I think so without using analogies, since they almost always break arguments apart. I hope that by sticking to this particular case I am not interpreted as someone trying to straightly so predict the future but as someone making a point.

Let's say that Prometheus wins this, thus having the possibility of using this case to patent medical procedures and the using of statistical correlations. You are assuming that big pharmaceuticals will use this to stop lots of doctors from rightfully saving lives using what is now standard medical procedure... but I believe big pharmaceuticals are doing just fine now, and are not stupid enough to piss off the whole US population. What I would do if I were them is to extend the validity of the patent on a drug (in the case describe in the article it is thiopurine) by using another related patent that hasn't expired yet and that covers a procedure. This won't send a substantially higher number of Bobbys to the grave, but it won't reduce the cost of each non-dying Bobby to not-die, which is what one supposes eventually happens when patents on a Bobby-death-stopping drug expires and hence the drug can be manufactured generically or by competing big pharmaceutical labs.

So, in the end they get to make more money in the long run (since patents can be made to last longer) and things don't get worse for Bobby and the people, they just don't get as better as they should.

I agree with you whole-heartedly on these patents. But... I think the point that you're missing is that the Supreme Court is like a meta-court. You don't go there to appeal your case, you go there to appeal specific decisions and interpretations of the law.

IMO, from a lawyers vantage point, what is the difference between a patent covering a software method (like encoding music) and a medical procedure? There really isn't any. Both are equally offensive to the folks who practice in these fields -- I have yet to meet a programmer in favor of software patents, and I'm sure doctors will feel the same way.

The problem is that the law as written is that software patents ARE ok. As long as that is true, how could any judge make a case that medical procedures are not?

I don't see this happening. Patients (in the US) don't know the cost of their care. So, when this new "patent tax" appears, it will be hidden from the consumer and silently passed down the chain (to insurers, to companies) and medical costs will continue to spiral out of control. It's unlikely to actually change the care provided -- but it's certain to make care more expensive.

I wouldn't count on congress fixing it either. I'll pass on something I recently overheard: "Lawyers should be banned from becoming law makers. It's a clear conflict of interest. "

I don't think it's the cost he's referring to. The fact that you could personally could be treated differently because of patent law would have a profound impact on the public perception of patent law. That could help lead to real reform of the system.

> The reality is that under the Patent Act, things which are not fundamentally "inventions" -- such as software algorithms, genes, and in this case, data correlations -- can legally be granted patents.

I have both hardware and software patents and I don't see this distinction that you feel is obvious.

Why is the use of a specific mechanism consisting of and, or, shift, etc to, say, efficiently route vehicle traffic any less of an invention that then removing sulphur before heating rubber to produce a substance that retains its elasticity? (Hmm - that removal and the relevant monitoring looks like a "material correlation".)

BTW - You can't patent "genes". You can patent specific genes to do specific things.

Thank you for pointing out the primary culprit here--Congress and its lame legislation in this area.

The headline's use of 'legalize' only perpetuates the confusion surrounding Supreme Court decisions. It is the underlying legislation that gives life to the patent claim not the fact that the Court upholds patents that succesfully adhere to a misguided law.

Ambiguous or otherwise weak legislation leaves the court in a no-win situation of shaping public policy via judicial opinions.

One problem is that even unambiguous legislation gets twisted by agency interpretations and case law to no longer mean what it originally said.

This is true.

And because of the implications of what you just said above. I'll leave it at that.

EDIT: In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have ended the post in that way. Instead, I'll acknowledge that this solution to silly patents is certainly viable. But that at the same time calling it "The best possible thing" seems somewhat narrow in the grand scheme of things. After all, it DOES require people to die to be workable.