The panel decision in this case reads recent Supreme Court precedent to create an existential threat to patent protection for an array of meritorious inventions. It avowedly holds that “groundbreaking” new diagnostic methods that make a significant contribution to the medical field” are ineligible for a patent whenever they (1) incorporate the discovery of a natural phenomenon, and (2) the techniques involved in putting that discovery to its first practical use were individually known beforehand. In other words, the person who first discovers a natural phenomenon can never obtain a patent on any practical application of that new knowledge, however surprising or revolutionary the results, unless the steps she teaches to use it are independently novel. As the example of this case vividly shows, that cannot be correct.
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