Patent eligibility in Australia: the winding road ahead

In the highly anticipated decision in D’Arcy v Myriad Genetics, handed down earlier this month, the High Court of Australia has unanimously held that isolated naturally occurring DNA is not eligible for patent protection. This decision overturned two earlier Federal Court decisions (Cancer Voices Australia v Myriad Genetics 2013 and D’Arcy v Myriad Genetics 2014) which had unanimously upheld the patent eligibility of isolated DNA, specifically the isolated BRCA DNA which was the subject of Myriad’s Australian patent number 686004.