On 13 June, the US Supreme Court denied the validity of patenting genes (Nature 498, 281–282; 2013) — but this is only part of the story. Since 2010, the court has made three separate landmark rulings that give inventors full access to the wellspring of ideas, laws of nature and natural products.

Patent law requires ingenuity and invention for patenting a discovery. The Supreme Court established in 1980 that genetically modifying cells to eat oil, resist pesticides or produce insulin, for example, was a patentable invention.

After the draft human genome was released in 2001, the US Patent and Trademark Office stipulated that only genes of known function could be patented. Into this category fell BRCA1 and BRCA2, the genes mutated in some breast and ovarian cancers, which were patented by the Utah firm Myriad Genetics. But questions arose — hadn't the firm simply extracted a natural product? Did it 'own' the genetic information within?

The court subsequently ruled that a patent that pre-empts all uses of a natural product was disallowed (I was a plaintiff in the case). In separate cases in 2010 and 2012, it also ruled against patents that pre-empt all uses of an abstract idea or of a natural law.

I disagree that these rulings could stifle US innovation: they set a higher bar for genuine invention so that people will gain from better medicines and devices. And they will retain ownership of their genomes.