Arguing the patent landscape

The Supreme Court is mulling decisions in two patent cases that could either reinforce or rearrange some fundamental intellectual property ground rules that biotech and pharmaceutical companies, and their investors, rely upon.

In Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings v. Metabolite Laboratories, which was argued on March 21, the court could bolster or diminish patent protections for diagnostic methods, and in the process set new boundaries on the scope of claims for basic research tools. ...