Can anyone with experience clarify this ruling? Is the SCOTUS saying that just because the specific cDNA strand doesn't exist in nature (as far as I know), then it is patentable?
Correct me if I misunderstood the ruling, but it seems to be absolutely ridiculous. You could just automate the process of isolating genes, sequencing them and statistically identifying their mRNA strands, isolating them, and creating cDNA strands. I know this isn't technically "nonobvious" but if you can automate the process to the point where you have robots spitting out gene patents, then it's a pretty low bar.
The process of making cDNA libraries (with and without robots) has long been solved. Usually in order to get a patent you need to prove "usefulness" which is not really automatable.
Correct me if I misunderstood the ruling, but it seems to be absolutely ridiculous. You could just automate the process of isolating genes, sequencing them and statistically identifying their mRNA strands, isolating them, and creating cDNA strands. I know this isn't technically "nonobvious" but if you can automate the process to the point where you have robots spitting out gene patents, then it's a pretty low bar.