Supreme Court Puts Tools in Turmoil

In a blow for tool companies and a boost for drug developers, the Supreme Court in June held that drug companies could--in specific circumstances--use tool patents without paying for them. The problem: no one knows just how much protection the ruling affords. Even drug-developing biotechs, who now get a freer hand with other companies' tools, aren't universally happy with the ruling.

Tool companies make money on a straightforward business model: they sell their patented tools to companies who use them in research. Companies who don't pay for the right to access those innovations, but make them on their own, using them for research, are infringing the tool companies' patents.

Or are they? In what was clearly a blow for tool companies and a boost for drug developers, the Supreme...

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