Cleveland Clinic Heart Disease Patent Invalid
Written April 4, 2019
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on April 1, 2019, held the Cleveland Clinic Foundation’s heart disease detection patent invalid because the claims of the patent were directed to a natural law and recited no other inventive concept. Cleveland Clinic Found. v. True Health Diagnostics LLC, Fed. Cir., No. 2018-1218, 4/1/19.
The patents disclose several methods of measuring a patient’s blood MPO level. The Court concluded that the claims were directed to the natural law that blood MPO levels correlate a patient’s level of myeloperoxidase (MPO), a naturally occurring protein that exists in higher levels in the blood of heart disease patients.
The patents disclose several methods of measuring a patient’s blood MPO level. The Court concluded that the claims were directed to the natural law that blood MPO levels correlate a patient’s level of myeloperoxidase (MPO), a naturally occurring protein that exists in higher levels in the blood of heart disease patients.