The patenting of medical treatment.

The Full Federal Court of Australia recently held, in a decisive break with long-established legal principle, that methods of medical treatment are patentable inventions. The judgment signals the advent of monopolies and therefore monopoly prices on new therapeutic procedures until now made freely available to the medical profession. It also heralds delays in the dissemination of information about discoveries of such procedures through teaching and publication until a patent application can be prepared for and made.