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PATENTS

One year after Vanda, are diagnostics patents transforming into methods of treatment to overcome Mayo-based rejections?

Nature Biotechnology volume 38, pages 279–283 (2020)Cite this article

Subjects

What impact have Mayo and Vanda had for applicants attempting to obtain patent protection for inventions involving methods of diagnosis and methods of treatment?

In 2012, the US Supreme Court issued its much-anticipated decision in the case of Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. (Mayo). The Court concluded that a claim directed to a method of optimizing drug dosage for treatment of a disorder was patent-ineligible for being directed to a law of nature, namely “the correlations between thiopurine metabolite levels and the toxicity and efficacy of thiopurine drug dosages”1. This decision had a substantial impact on the threshold of patentability for life sciences inventions, in particular those involving methods of detection, diagnosis and treatment2.

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Fig. 1: Study results.

References

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported, in part, by a Novo Nordisk Foundation grant for a scientifically independent Collaborative Research Programme in Biomedical Innovation Law (grant agreement number NNF17SA0027784).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Law, Medicine, and Life Sciences (LML), Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Mateo Aboy, Cristina Crespo, Kathleen Liddell, Neil Davey & Johnathon Liddicoat

  2. Center for Advanced Studies in Biomedical Innovation Law (CeBIL), University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Timo Minssen

Authors
  1. Mateo Aboy
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  2. Cristina Crespo
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  3. Kathleen Liddell
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  4. Neil Davey
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  5. Johnathon Liddicoat
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  6. Timo Minssen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mateo Aboy.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Aboy, M., Crespo, C., Liddell, K. et al. One year after Vanda, are diagnostics patents transforming into methods of treatment to overcome Mayo-based rejections?. Nat Biotechnol 38, 279–283 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-020-0440-4

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