It is far more likely that the patents prevented additional research on the BRCA genes.
That led to the debut of the BRCA test from Myriad Genetics in 1996.
If these are successful they will then test the treatment on patients with BRCA-linked tumours.
But Robert Sweet, the presiding judge, disagreed, at least as far as the BRCA genes are concerned.
Such legal arguments may take four or five years, by which time Myriad's BRCA patents start expiring.
Men can also carry a BRCA mutation, raising their risk of prostate, pancreatic and other types of cancer.
Many mutations, including those of BRCA genes, produce proteins that are too small.
Although, unlike a Tay-Sachs test, BRCA tests make no definite predictions, some manufacturers are marketing them especially for Ashkenazim.
At the moment, however, the association between gene and disease is weaker in each case than between breast and BRCA genes.
The BRCA molecules in question contain less than 100, 000 nucleotides, compared with 80 million or more nucleotides on a single chromosome.
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The BRCA genetic testing result gave a probability of getting cancer.
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Dr. Susan Domchek, executive director of the Basser Research Center for BRCA at the University of Pennsylvania, said the escalating rate is linked to easy access of information.
And the BRCA gene tests are not medicine: they are a diagnostic test that reads your DNA and tells you if you have harmful mutations in two specific genes.
Myriad Genetics subsequently licensed the patent rights from Utah, and has used them ever since to maintain its monopoly and prevent others from developing tests on the BRCA genes.
However, it is not like a test for the disease itself - not all women who are positive for BRCA 1 or 2 will go on to develop the disease.
In fact, it is likely that only a small proportion of hereditary cancers have a link to the BRCA gene, so a negative result could never rule out even hereditary breast cancer.
Myriad has used its patents to develop its BRACAnalysis test looks for mutations on the breast cancer predisposition gene, or BRCA. Those mutations are associated with much greater risks of breast and ovarian cancer.
Some women without the BRCA mutations who are diagnosed with cancer in one breast decide to have both removed even though data suggest their risk of getting the disease in their second breast is low.
Dr Eric Sidebottom, a member of the Primary Care Genetics Group, says that it would be foolish to offer BRCA testing to any woman who does not already have a strong family history of the disease.
However, authors of the study indicate that a double mastectomy may make sense for women with a strong family history of breast or ovarian cancer, or for women who've tested positive for genetic mutations in the BRCA genes.
In addition, younger women found to be at high risk of breast cancer, either through family history or because they carry the BRCA 1 or 2 gene, would receive annual scans to check for signs of the disease.
In fact, a colleague and I published a paper just last year describing how to do this, and we released a free software package that allows anyone to test their BRCA genes at home on a desktop computer.
The campaign, which developed the BRCA II test, recommends it only in cases where a very strong family link exists - perhaps in cases where more than two relatives have developed the disease, or where a very young close relative has fallen ill.
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