Greg Stohr has the story at Bloomberg in Blood-Test Patents Debated at High Court as Einstein Invoked.
We have fun with these patent issues because they are so absurd.
The question to us initially is as follows: Did God invent Einstein, or vice versa?
And, in either case, who holds the patent rights to E=mc2?
That question is involved in an issue of law these days.
Stohr quotes U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer:
"The justices sought to draw what proved to be a fine line between natural phenomena, which can’t be patented, and applications of those principles, which can be.To understand what Breyer is talking about, we might say that God invented "fermentation" but "man" invented beer as an application of that natural phenomena.
“My question is, ‘What has to be added to a law of nature to make it a patentable process?’” Justice Stephen Breyer told Mayo’s lawyer. “If you put too little in the answer to that question, I believe I can make things like E=mc2 patentable,” he said, referring to Einstein’s formula showing the connection between an object’s mass and its energy."
“And if you put too much in, you are going to wreck your own case,” Breyer said.
And that gives us the correct answer for many other patent cases.
You should be able to patent YOUR particular brew, but no other.
Suffice it to say, the Justices are not that far yet in their understanding, but we are hoping, given time, that they get there.
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