BRCA goes to court

OncorMed Inc., which filed a patent infringement suit against Myriad Genetics Inc. after initially indicating that it would license its BRCA1 patent, is taking on a rival better situated to finance a protracted intellectual property struggle.

ONM's U.S. Patent No. 5,654,155 claims a consensus sequence for the full-length BRCA1 coding region, seven identified polymorphisms in the sequence, and the use of that information to identify people with or without an increased susceptibility to breast or ovarian cancer. Mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 have been associated with those diseases...