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The Supreme Court, Process Patents, and Medical Innovation

List of authors.
  • Aaron S. Kesselheim, M.D., J.D., M.P.H.

On November 9, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Bilski v. Kappos, one of the most closely watched cases in the Court's current term. The central question involves the legitimacy of a patent on a method for hedging risk in commodities trading, but the outcome will have important implications for health care delivery and research. Although patents covering medicines, devices, and research targets such as DNA sequences have become commonplace, in recent years there has been a surge in new patents on medical processes.1 Patents have been awarded for processes such as making diagnoses, performing surgery, making prescribing . . .

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Funding and Disclosures

Financial and other disclosures provided by the author are available with the full text of this article at NEJM.org.

This article (10.1056/NEJMp0909658) was published on November 18, 2009, at NEJM.org.

Author Affiliations

From the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston.

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