Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/11pdf/10-1150.pdf
Page Number: 27.0

Cite as:  566 U. S. ____ (2012) 

23 

Opinion of the Court 

Respondent 52.

Other medical experts, however, argue strongly against 
a  legal  rule  that  would  make  the  present  claims  patent
eligible,  invoking  policy  considerations  that  point  in  the 
opposite direction.  The American Medical Association, the 
American  College  of  Medical  Genetics,  the  American 
Hospital  Association,  the  American  Society  of  Human 
Genetics,  the  Association  of  American  Medical  Colleges,
the  Association  for  Molecular  Pathology,  and  other  medi­
cal organizations tell us that if “claims to exclusive rights 
over  the  body’s  natural  responses  to  illness  and  medical 
treatment are permitted to stand, the result will be a vast 
thicket of exclusive rights over the use of critical scientific
data  that  must  remain  widely  available  if  physicians  are
to  provide  sound  medical  care.”    Brief  for  American  Col­
lege of Medical Genetics et al. as Amici Curiae 7; see also 
App. to Brief for Association Internationale pour la Protec­
tion  de  la  Propriété  Intellectuelle  et al.  as  Amici  Curiae 
A6, A16 (methods of medical treatment are not patentable 
in most of Western Europe). 

We do not find this kind of difference of opinion surpris­
ing.  Patent protection is, after all, a two-edged sword.  On 
the  one  hand,  the  promise  of  exclusive  rights  provides 
monetary  incentives  that  lead  to  creation,  invention,  and 
discovery.  On  the  other  hand,  that  very  exclusivity  can
impede the flow of information that might permit, indeed 
spur, invention, by, for example, raising the price of using
the patented ideas once created, requiring potential users 
to conduct costly and time-consuming searches of existing
patents  and  pending  patent  applications,  and  requiring 
the negotiation of complex licensing arrangements.  At the 
same  time,  patent  law’s  general  rules  must  govern  in­
ventive activity in many different fields of human endeav­
or,  with  the  result  that  the  practical  effects  of  rules  that 
reflect  a  general  effort  to  balance  these  considerations 
may  differ  from  one  field  to  another.    See  Bohannan  &