Abstract

From the late 1980s, scientists began concentrating their search for genes presumed responsible for inherited tendencies to get ovarian and breast cancers on chromosome 17. The Berkeley group and others around the world were closing in on the sequence when Mark Skolnick, a founder of Myriad Genetics, announced successfully isolating and cloning the BRCA1 mutation. In 1994, Myriad and other cooperating parties first filed a patent for the BRCA1 mutation they isolated and then in 1995 they also filed patents for what is known as BRCA2, a related mutation. By 1996, Myriad developed and began marketing “BRCAnalysis™,” their predictive test for the presence of possibly cancer‐causing mutations. Shortly after the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) filed its case against Myriad, a series of cases went up to the US Supreme Court that set the stage for its eventual decision in Myriad, and revisited the subject of Section 101 patent‐eligibility.