As you hopefully remember, a few months back, a US court ruled that gene patents were not valid, after specifically dealing with a challenge, brought by the ACLU and some cancer patients, about a patent held by Myriad Genetics on the process of identifying BRCA1 and BRCA2, two genes that indicate susceptibility to breast cancer. While there will still likely be years of appeals before this gets anywhere in the US, it looks like a very similar fight is about to start down in Australia. Glyn Moody points us to the news that a similar lawsuit has been filed down under.

The difference here may be that, in Australia, Myriad worked out a deal with a local company, and that company has “gifted” the patent to various healthcare institutions for no royalty, meaning that the fact pattern is a bit different (in the US, if you wanted the test, you had to go to Myriad… or… Myriad). Of course, last year we had mentioned that Australian politicians were already discussing the possibility of outlawing gene patents — so, potentially the regulatory process could make the judicial process here moot.

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