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Laboratory corporation of america5/21/2023 the enormous transaction costs that would be imposed on would-be users.” Id., at 305–306 cf. the enormous potential for rent seeking that would be created if property rights could be obtained in and. Posner, The Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law 305 (2003). And scholars have noted that “patent law exclu fundamental scientific (including mathematical) and technological principles,” (like copyright’s exclusion of “ideas”) is a rule of the latter variety. One way in which patent law seeks to sail between these opposing and risky shoals is through rules that bring certain types of invention and discovery within the scope of patentability while excluding others. Patent law seeks to avoid the dangers of overprotection just as surely as it seeks to avoid the diminished incentive to invent that underprotection can threaten. Sometimes their presence can discourage research by impeding the free exchange of information, for example by forcing researchers to avoid the use of potentially patented ideas, by leading them to conduct costly and time-consuming searches of existing or pending patents, by requiring complex licensing arrangements, and by raising the costs of using the patented information, sometimes prohibitively so. The problem arises from the fact that patents do not only encourage research by providing monetary incentives for invention. Rather, the reason for the exclusion is that sometimes too much patent protection can impede rather than “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,” the constitutional objective of patent and copyright protection. To the contrary, research into such matters may be costly and time-consuming monetary incentives may matter and the fruits of those incentives and that research may prove of great benefit to the human race. The justification for the principle does not lie in any claim that “laws of nature” are obvious, or that their discovery is easy, or that they are not useful. 584, 585 (1978), the motive power of electromagnetism or steam, Morse, supra, at 116, “the heat of the sun, electricity, or the qualities of metals,” Funk Brothers Seed Co. Neither can one patent “a novel and useful mathematical formula,” Parker v. The principle means that Einstein could not have “patent his celebrated law that E=mc 2 nor could Newton have patented the law of gravity.” Diamond v. Harford, Webster’s Patent Cases 295, 371 (1841) Le Roy v. This principle finds its roots in both English and American law. The relevant principle of law “xclude from … patent protection … laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas.” Diamond v. And those who engage in medical research, who practice medicine, and who as patients depend upon proper health care, might well benefit from this Court’s authoritative answer. The parties and amici have fully briefed the question. The question presented is not unusually difficult. In my view, we should not dismiss the writ. The Court has dismissed the writ as improvidently granted. i, namely, the relationship between homocysteine and vitamin deficiency. We granted certiorari in this case to determine whether the patent claim is invalid on the ground that it improperly seeks to “claim a monopoly over a basic scientific relationship,” Pet. And they enjoined LabCorp from using any tests that would lead the doctors it serves to find a vitamin deficiency by taking account of elevated homocysteine levels. They also found the petitioner, Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings (LabCorp), liable for inducing infringement of the claim when it encouraged doctors to order diagnostic tests for measuring homocysteine. The lower courts held that the patent claim is valid. The process consists of using any test (whether patented or unpatented) to measure the level in a body fluid of an amino acid called homocysteine and then noticing whether its level is elevated above the norm if so, a vitamin deficiency is likely. This case involves a patent that claims a process for helping to diagnose deficiencies of two vitamins, folate and cobalamin. Justice Breyer, with whom Justice Stevens and Justice Souter join, dissenting. On writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the federal circuit
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