Myriad wins partial victory at EPO over BRCA

An AFP story gives several quotes on the EPO decision concerning a patent to Myriad:

"The problem in the Myriad case is not that they have a patent, but that they abused their monopoly," commented Dominique Stoppa-Lynnet, a professor of genetics at the Institut Curie in Paris who launched the legal challenge against the company in 2004. "We would have preferred that the patent remain revoked. But the outcome is better than having the patent the way it was delivered in 2001," she told AFP.

"Governments, hospitals and researchers feared that Myriad's patents would stop research, drive up health costs and deprive women of appropriate care," said Richard Gold, a professor at McGill University in Canada and director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy.

The EPO decision handed down 19 Nov. 08 said the Myriad patent claims only cover diagnostics tools designed to find so-called "frame shift" mutations showing a predisposition for breast and ovarian cancer.