The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it will consider a legal challenge to a patent on a breast cancer gene held by the firm Myriad Genetics. The case could have broad implications for the future of medical diagnostic techniques.

In March, the Supreme Court ordered an appeals court to reconsider a 2011 decision holding that genetic material could be patented once it has been "isolated" from the human body. At the time, the Supreme Court had just rejected patents on medical diagnostic techniques, and the high court wanted the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to re-consider its previous ruling in light of this new precedent.

In August, the Federal Circuit, which is responsible for hearing all patent law appeals, decided to stick with its previous ruling. It once again concluded that DNA sequences could be patented once they had been isolated from the human body. Now the Supreme Court will have a chance to check the Federal Circuit's work.

The underlying lawsuit in the case was brought by a group of medical professionals and patients who argue that their research and health is adversely affected by Myriad's patents. The courts have held that natural phenomena are not eligible for patent protection, and the plaintiffs argue that patenting a naturally-occurring genetic sequence amounts to claiming a fact of nature. But Myriad disputes that, arguing that the complex process for extracting the genetic material effectively creates a new, artificially created, molecule that is eligible for patent protection.

The Federal Circuit's ruling was decided by a 2-1 margin. The dissenting judge, William Bryson, compared isolating the DNA to snapping a leaf from a tree. "Prematurely plucking the leaf would not turn it into a human-made invention," Judge Bryson wrote in August. "That would remain true if there were minor differences between the plucked leaf and the fallen autumn leaf, unless those differences imparted 'markedly different characteristics' to the plucked leaf."

But the two-judge majority disagreed with Judge Bryson. "No one could contemplate that snapping a leaf from a tree would be worthy of a patent," they argued. On the other hand, "isolating genes to provide useful diagnostic tools and medicines is surely what the patent laws are intended to encourage and protect."

There seems to be a parallel to a Federal Circuit ruling last year holding that the Supreme Court's rule against patenting mathematical algorithms doesn't apply if applying the algorithm is sufficiently complicated. Similarly, the two judges who upheld the Myriad patent appear to believe that if it's technically challenging to extract DNA sequences from the human body, then the resulting substance will be patent-eligible. Now we'll find out if the nation's highest court buys this line of reasoning.