The Supreme Court jolted the biotechnology industry with a unanimous ruling that threw out two medical-testing patents and suggested companies need to do more to prove their discoveries are really new.
The ruling sparked uncertainty about the booming field of personalized medicine, in which some of the world’s largest drug companies are vying to tailor treatments to patients’ unique makeups by using diagnostic tests.
The court, in the latest legal opinion tightening patent rules, said that merely telling doctors of a new scientific discovery and recommending they use it to treat patients is not patentable.
