Australia’s Federal Court has ruled that private companies can patent human gene mutations.

But opponents say the finding was based on laws from the nineteen-fifties, which have no bearing on cutting-edge biological discoveries.

The ruling that a company can own a genetic sequence is a big deal for the future of both medicine and intellectual property, and something that the Cancer Council says will cost lives.

The Court found that US company Myriad Genetics can patent the BRCA1 gene mutation, which is associated with breast and ovarian cancer, under current Australian laws.

The Cancer Council says if private companies have the right to monopolise human genetic material, it will be horrible news for many patients.

The group says the case shows the law must be changed.

The Federal Court’s ruling came from a case brought by Brisbane resident and breast cancer survivor Yvonne D'Arcy.

Ms D’Arcy argued that the patents held by Myriad Genetics on the isolated BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic mutations constituted a ‘discovery’, not an ‘invention’.

The distinction is important, as it is not possible to patent naturally-occurring discoveries.

But the Court ruled that the patent was valid, operating on precedents set by a patent dispute in the nineteen-fifties.

Patent lawyer and Murdoch University Adjunct Professor Luigi Palombi has told the ABC that the Federal Court misapplied the legal precedents.

“Number one, it was a decision made in 1959, more than 50 years ago, in relation to a patent that had nothing whatsoever to do with biotechnology,” he said.

“The second thing is that they've selectively interpreted that decision.

“There are obviously passages in there where the court talks about an artificially-created state of affairs in a field of economic endeavour.

“To interpret those words to mean virtually any level of artificiality is going to transform something from a product of nature into something patentable... is I think reading words or meanings into those words that just aren't there.”

Professor Palombi says it would be chaos for the industry if Myriad Genetics decides to enforce its patent.

“Virtually every organisation that has performed a BRCA test in this country, going all the way back to 1995 when this patent was granted, has the potential to have to pay damages to Genetic Technologies if they were to do that,” he said.