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Court says human genes cannot be patented
Court News |
2013/06/13 09:22
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The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that companies cannot patent parts of naturally-occurring human genes, a decision with the potential to profoundly affect the emerging and lucrative medical and biotechnology industries.
The high court's unanimous judgment reverses three decades of patent awards by government officials. It throws out patents held by Salt Lake City-based Myriad Genetics Inc. on an increasingly popular breast cancer test brought into the public eye recently by actress Angelina Jolie's revelation that she had a double mastectomy because of one of the genes involved in this case.
Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the court's decision, said that Myriad's assertion — that the DNA it isolated from the body for its proprietary breast and ovarian cancer tests were patentable — had to be dismissed because it violates patent rules. The court has said that laws of nature, natural phenomena and abstract ideas are not patentable.
"We hold that a naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated," Thomas said.
Patents are the legal protection that gives inventors the right to prevent others from making, using or selling a novel device, process or application. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been awarding patents on human genes for almost 30 years, but opponents of Myriad Genetics Inc.'s patents on the two genes linked to increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer say such protection should not be given to something that can be found inside the human body.
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Texas EMT to plead not guilty to explosives charge
Court News |
2013/05/13 23:46
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A lawyer for a Texas paramedic arrested on charges of possessing bomb-making material says his client will plead not guilty and had no connection to the fertilizer plant explosion that killed 14 people last month.
Waco attorney Jonathan Sibley said in a prepared statement Saturday that his client, Bryce Reed anxiously awaits his next court appearance Wednesday, which will include a detention hearing.
Authorities arrested Reed on Friday, but stressed that he has not been linked to the April 17 explosion in West.
The statement said Reed remained "heartbroken" about the explosion, in which he lost friends, and wants to continue to help his community rebuild.
OC grade school janitor guilty of bathroom filming
Criminal Law - POSTED: 2013/05/10 09:34
A janitor has been found guilty of hiding a video camera in the girls' bathroom of an Orange County elementary school.
A jury found 25-year-old Angel Rojas guilty Thursday of misdemeanor counts of secret filming and child annoyance.
He could get 18 months in jail and a $6,000 fine at his Tuesday sentencing, and will have to register as a sex offender for life.
In July 2012, Rojas was working as a summer janitor at a Santa Ana grade school.
Prosecutors say he closed several campus restrooms to direct women and girls to one where he had hidden an iPod Nano with a video recorder.
A woman working in the summer school program found |
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Top prosecutor in Del Norte County suspended
Court News |
2013/04/12 15:38
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The top prosecutor in Northern California's remote Del Norte County has been suspended without pay after a judge recommended he be disbarred.
The Del Norte Board of Supervisors voted unanimously in a closed session Friday to suspend District Attorney Jon Alexander.
The suspension comes after State Bar Judge Lucy Armendariz recommended that Alexander be disbarred after concluding Alexander had violated three rules of prosecutorial conduct - communication with a represented party, moral turpitude and suppression of evidence.
The judge ordered Alexander placed on inactive status, meaning he will not be able to practice law in California as of Sunday, pending a possible appeal. |
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High court to review Kansas sheriff's killing
Court News |
2013/02/27 23:12
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The Supreme Court has agreed to consider reinstating the conviction and death sentence of a man who said he was high on meth when he killed a Kansas sheriff.
The justices on Monday said they will review a state Supreme Court ruling that granted a new trial to Scott Cheever, who admitted to shooting Greenwood County Sheriff Matt Samuels.
The Kansas court said Cheever's rights were violated during his trial because a psychiatrist was allowed to testify about Cheever's psychological records without his consent.
Samuels' death prompted changes in the Kansas criminal code to make it more difficult to purchase the ingredients used in making meth.
The case will be argued in the fall. |
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Jury: Oregon car-bomb suspect guilty of terrorism
Court News |
2013/02/01 14:56
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Three hours before they handed down a sentence that could put an Oregon man in prison for life, deliberating jurors sent a note to a trial judge with a question.
Did the man whose fate they were deciding need to have envisioned the specific crime for which he was accused? Or did he merely need to be inclined toward some kind of terroristic act?
Their question more broadly reflects the central debate at the heart of the trial of Mohamed Mohamud, a 21-year-old Somali-American found guilty on Thursday of attempting to bomb a Portland Christmas tree-lighting in November 2010.
Prosecutors were met by a claim of entrapment by Mohamud's defense team, and needed to convince jurors that he was predisposed to terrorism by the time an FBI informant began discussing radical jihad with him over emails.
The judge, Garr King, told jurors Thursday that Mohamud only had to be likely to commit the offense or one like it, and he did not specifically have to be thinking about a bomb at the specific time and place at which he and two undercover FBI agents decided to plant one.
The bomb was a fake, supplied by the agents posing as jihadis.
Jurors were given starkly different portraits of the man who was 17 when the FBI began to focus on him. In the prosecution's description, Mohamud was a powder keg in search of a spark, an angry teenager with the right combination of anti-Western sentiment and a plausible cover story as an Oregon college student. |
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