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Myriad Genetics has essentially given up trying to stop other companies from offering tests for increased risk of breast cancer, ending a dispute that was the subject of a landmark Supreme Court ruling that human genes cannot be patented.
The company has settled or is in the process of settling patent-infringement lawsuits it filed against other companies that now offer such testing, a Myriad spokesman said on Tuesday.
Myriad’s lucrative monopoly on testing for mutations in two genes linked to an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer ended in 2013, when the Supreme Court ruled that human genes were not eligible for patents because they were products of nature.
Numerous laboratories began offering tests, some for much less than the roughly $4,000 Myriad charged for a complete analysis of the two genes, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2.
Myriad sued many of those companies, saying they were infringing other patent claims that had not been invalidated by the Supreme Court.
But last March, a federal district judge in Utah ruled against Myriad’s request for a preliminary injunction...