Are human genes patentable? Back in 2005, when Tania Simoncelli first contemplated this complex question, US patent law said they were — which meant patent holders had the right to stop anyone from sequencing, testing or even looking at a patented gene. Troubled by the way this law both harmed patients and created a barrier to biomedical innovation, Simoncelli and her colleagues at the ACLU challenged it. In this riveting talk, hear the story of how they took a case everybody told them they would lose all the way to the Supreme Court.

TED talk downloaded from The Internet Archive.