# Tania Simoncelli: How I took on the gene patent industry -- and won

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.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2016
- Runtime: 18 min
- By: TED.com
- Genres: Education
- Archive: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/TaniaSimoncelli_2014X)
- Licence or status: [CC BY-NC-ND 3.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/) (as the archive states it)
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/ia/TaniaSimoncelli_2014X?play=1)