Question

Briefly expalin why the supreme court decision regarding Myyriad Genetics has disrupted many biotech companies

Answer 1

Reference: Klusty, Tobin, and Richard Weinmeyer. "Supreme Court to Myriad Genetics: Synthetic DNA is Patentable but Isolated Genes Are Not." AMA journal of ethics 17.9 (2015): 849.

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the court, stated that, while Section 101 of the Patent Act applies to “[w]hoever invents or discovers any new and useful…composition of matter, or any new and useful improvements thereof” [18], the court has “long held that this provision contains an important implicit exception[:] Laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas” are basic tools and building blocks and, hence, “lie beyond the domain of patent protection” [18]. Patents exist to promote creation and to protect ideas, while the elements of nature are “free to all men and reserved exclusively to none” [18].

Quite a few biotech companies had started making profits off of the discoveries they made of natural elements relating to the field of health, nature, etc . As Justice Thomas ruled in the statement above, that such discoveries are beyond the domain of patent protection, companies involved in the related fields were affected.
Let us look at Myriad Genetics itself. It seeked patent for the discovery of BRCA1 gene sequence discovery and subsequent discoveries thereafter. It also filed for patent for all the diagnostic tools and treatment the company developed for disease.
Such biotech companies which held patent for biotech discoveries enjoyed monopoly in the market for the services they offered. Which ended up generating huge amounts of profit for them.
With the Supreme Court decision, all the patents these companies held came to be withdrawn, thus ending the mnopoly such companies enjoyed and, opening up the market space for other researchers and companies working the same domain.