Natural DNA cannot be patented, Supreme Court rules

Angelina Jolie made headlines recently for undergoing a double mastectomy because she carried the gene highly associated with hereditary breast cancer. The biotech firm, Myriad Genetics, that isolated the gene tried to patent it. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ruled that "a naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated." However, synthetically created strands of DNA are eligible because they do not occur in nature.