Via Blawgletter (and a couple other sources), the whole eleven-judge Federal Circuit issued a rare en banc opinion that held, 9-2, that Harvard, MIT, the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and Ariad Pharmaceuticals, Inc. couldn’t, well, I’ll let Barry Barnett explain:

Ariad, MIT, the Whitehead Institute, and Harvard claimed that Eli Lilly infringed their patent on ways to reduce the symptoms of some diseases by causing a protein — Nuclear Factor kappaB* — to behave. The problem (as Blawgletter gleans from the judges’ five opinions) arises from the fact that the inventors seem not to have figured out how to suppress symptom-causing NF-kB activity. They appear simply to have discovered that NF-kB existed and guessed that somehow bringing it to heel would help sick people feel better. Ariad, MIT, Whitehead, and Harvard urged that the first paragraph of section 12 requires a patent to say only enough to “enable” an in-the-know person to build something that makes NF-kB curtail its hurtful conduct inside human cells.

I knew some of the folks at those places were smart, but I never realized they were so smart they didn’t have to actually invent anything to get a patent. Instead, they can just describe a problem and then claim a patent over someone else’s solution.

To call the case “significant” is an understatement. Among those submitting amicus briefs to the Federal Circuit were:

The University of California

Federal Circuit Bar Association

Monsanto Company

GlaxoSmithKline

Microsoft Corporation

Google Inc.

Verizon Communications, Inc.

…and a dozen other schools and technology, pharmaceutical, and research companies who make—or pay—billions of dollars related to broad patents that claim to cover discoveries, but not necessarily inventions, in scientific fields.

The Federal Circuit, however, is even smarter still:

[A] separate requirement to describe one’s invention is basic to patent law. Every patent must describe an invention. It is part of the quid pro quo of a patent; one describes an invention, and, if the law’s other requirements are met, one obtains a patent. The specification must then, of course, describe how to make and use the invention (i.e., enable it), but that is a different task. A description of the claimed invention allows the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) to examine applications effectively; courts to understand the invention, determine compliance with the statute, and to construe the claims; and the public to understand and improve upon the invention and to avoid the claimed boundaries of the patentee’s exclusive rights. […] Perhaps there is little difference in some fields between describing an invention and enabling one to make and use it, but that is not always true of certain inventions, including chemical and chemical-like inventions. Thus, although written description and enablement often rise and fall together, requiring a written description of the invention plays a vital role in curtailing claims that do not require undue experimentation to make and use, and thus satisfy enablement, but that have not been invented, and thus cannot be described. For example, a propyl or butyl compound may be made by a process analogous to a disclosed methyl compound, but, in the absence of a statement that the inventor invented propyl and butyl compounds, such compounds have not been described and are not entitled to a patent.

Ariad Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Eli Lilly and Co., pp. 12, 26.

Specific to the patent at issue,

The ’516 patent discloses no working or even prophetic examples of methods that reduce NF-κB activity, and no completed syntheses of any of the molecules prophesized to be capable of reducing NF-κB activity. The state of the art at the time of filing was primitive and uncertain, leaving Ariad with an insufficient supply of prior art knowledge with which to fill the gaping holes in its disclosure. See Capon, 418 F.3d at 1358 (“It is well-recognized that in the unpredictable fields of science, it is appropriate to recognize the variability in the science in determining the scope of the coverage to which the inventor is entitled.”). Whatever thin thread of support a jury might find in the decoy-molecule hypothetical simply cannot bear the weight of the vast scope of these generic claims. … Here, the specification at best describes decoy molecule structures and hypothesizes with no accompanying description that they could be used to reduce NF-κB activity. Yet the asserted claims are far broader.

Thus, the patent was invalid.

The Federal Circuit’s opinion, though, goes much farther than the facts of the case, with a broad rule for future “discovery” patents:

Ariad complains that the doctrine disadvantages universities to the extent that basic research cannot be patented. But the patent law has always been directed to the “useful Arts,” U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 8, meaning inventions with a practical use, see Brenner v. Manson, 383 U.S. 519, 532-36 (1966). Much university research relates to basic research, including research into scientific principles and mechanisms of action, see, e.g., Rochester, 358 F.3d 916, and universities may not have the resources or inclination to work out the practical implications of all such research, i.e., finding and identifying compounds able to affect the mechanism discovered. That is no failure of the law’s interpretation, but its intention. Patents are not awarded for academic theories, no matter how groundbreaking or necessary to the later patentable inventions of others. “[A] patent is not a hunting license. It is not a reward for the search, but compensation for its successful conclusion.” Id. at 930 n.10 (quoting Brenner, 383 U.S. at 536). Requiring a written description of the invention limits patent protection to those who actually perform the difficult work of “invention”—that is, conceive of the complete and final invention with all its claimed limitations—and disclose the fruits of that effort to the public. That research hypotheses do not qualify for patent protection possibly results in some loss of incentive, although Ariad presents no evidence of any discernable impact on the pace of innovation or the number of patents obtained by universities. But claims to research plans also impose costs on downstream research, discouraging later invention. The goal is to get the right balance, and the written description doctrine does so by giving the incentive to actual invention and not “attempt[s] to preempt the future before it has arrived.” Fiers, 984 F.2d at 1171. As this court has repeatedly stated, the purpose of the written description requirement is to “ensure that the scope of the right to exclude, as set forth in the claims, does not overreach the scope of the inventor’s contribution to the field of art as described in the patent specification.” Rochester, 358 F.3d at 920 (quoting Reiffin v. Microsoft Corp., 214 F.3d 1342, 1345 (Fed. Cir. 2000)). It is part of the quid pro quo of the patent grant and ensures that the public receives a meaningful disclosure in exchange for being excluded from practicing an invention for a period of time. Enzo, 323 F.3d at 970.

Id., pp. 28-29 (emphases added).

I think the Federal Circuit made the right decision both on the statute and on the policy—there’s a substantial consensus today that our patent system is unjustly overprotective in many areas, including biochemical research—but the decision is not without some costs. As the Circuit recognized with the “loss of incentive” part above, it was already hard for scientists to justify to non-scientist corporate managers or school trustees the value of basic research without referencing the financial upside of patentable discoveries. Now that will be even harder, since the financial upside is less lucrative and less secure.

That said, basic research progressed well enough for hundreds of years without the over-patenting we have today, and even a small increase in government funding could likely make up for any new losses due to reduced patentability. Thus, on the whole, the case is a victory for law and for science.

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* NF-kB, says Wikipedia,