Friday, March 14, 2014

More Stuff Happens with the BRCA genes

So there's still activity in the Myriad case, and also a second edition of my book Who Owns You is now under contract with Wiley. My draft is due in August so I'll be writing this summer to update and revise in light of the significantly different legal landscape since the first edition was published. That landscape is active, but so far stable since the Supreme Court case. When Myriad lost in the Supreme Court, as I indicated they would, they sought to vigorously defend what remained of their patents, including by suing those who used the decision as an argument to compete in the BRCA testing arena. Myriad used the aggressive move of asking for a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit against one of those competitors, which turned out to be a big mistake. To win an injunction like that, before the merits of a case are reached, you need, among other things, to demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits. In a 100+ page opinion, the court in Myriad v. Ambry denied the injunction, using the opportunity to expound on the merits and concluding that Myriad has no such likelihood. This is an early blow that won't help their stock price, and moreover, gives a pretty good early clue as to how the case will go. With the opinion's clear language, other companies are now entering the testing market and competing with Myriad, taking their chances and betting on the likelihood that in fact Myriad cannot monopolize the isolated DNA segments that the Supreme Court already said they cannot monopolize.