The patent system was conceived to encourage innovation but has become vulnerable to excesses that have the opposite effect –

• Locks up ideas
• Discourages competition
• Hurts the advancement of diagnostics and therapeutics

The US Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that human gene may not be patented , underlining  that laws of nature, natural phenomena and abstract ideas are not patentable because they are not themselves innovation but the basic tool of scientific and technological work .

The processes of isolating the DNA are too well understood by geneticists and so cannot be patented. However , if companies can establish that their methods of isolating genes are innovative or that the DNA under consideration has been synthesized in a lab need not lose heart – they can obtain patents on new applications of knowledge gained from genetic research.

While genes are certainly a product of nature , the isolation of fragments and knowledge of their properties are the outcome of huge financial and material resources invested with its attendant risks. Researchers who discover human gene sequences responsible for a particular disease may not have adequate incentive to disclose the new discovery . Even scientific exploration for new and rare organisms will get a setback .