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In 2005, Tania Simoncelli managed to shock the senior lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Simoncelli, the organization’s first science adviser, informed him that companies were snatching up patents on many human genes. “That’s ridiculous!” exclaimed the counsel, Chris Hansen. “Who can we sue?”
It would not be that easy. Although the ACLU, a non-profit organization based in New York City, has spent nearly a century suing state and federal agencies for infringing civil rights, it had never challenged a patent. And the prospect seemed daunting in this case: the US Patent and Trademark Office had been issuing patents on human genes for nearly 30 years. But Simoncelli saw the practice as a threat to the right of individuals to access their own medical information, as well as to scientists’ ability to do research on the genes.
Over the next four years, Simoncelli helped ACLU’s lawyers to pull together a case and identify a suitable target for a suit — Myriad Genetics, a firm based in Salt Lake City, Utah, that had been particularly aggressive in defending its...
It would not be that easy. Although the ACLU, a non-profit organization based in New York City, has spent nearly a century suing state and federal agencies for infringing civil rights, it had never challenged a patent. And the prospect seemed daunting in this case: the US Patent and Trademark Office had been issuing patents on human genes for nearly 30 years. But Simoncelli saw the practice as a threat to the right of individuals to access their own medical information, as well as to scientists’ ability to do research on the genes.
Over the next four years, Simoncelli helped ACLU’s lawyers to pull together a case and identify a suitable target for a suit — Myriad Genetics, a firm based in Salt Lake City, Utah, that had been particularly aggressive in defending its...