Recently we were forced to remove the test on degenerative myelopathy from our combination packages. Along with this, we had to increase the price from € 39,50 to € 79,50. The reason for being forced to do so, is because another laboratory claimed a patent for this test. Since no sublicenses are given by this lab, we are forced to forward each sample to the patent holder.
A lot of our clients are, for understandable reasons, not too happy with this development. It is a well-defined position of our group of companies that patenting of a genetic test without an option of licensing is not of any help of our clients. Especially because these genetic tests are an important factor to keep your dog free from inheritable diseases! As an aside: patented mutations and/or procedures are oftentimes discovered in researches paid with public money.
We would like to offer our clients an alternative. Therefore we expanded our test catalogue with the option to forward all patented test to another partner laboratory. This laboratory is located outside of the patented regions. Therefore no extra costs are made for the patent which drastically reduces the price per test.
The tests that are performed by our partner laboratory are technically identical to the way a patent holder would test a sample. The certificates of analysis are therefore not less reliable or different from interpretation than the test from the patent holder.
Besides offering our clients the possibility to forward patented test to our partner lab, we still keep the option to forward samples to the patent holder. We do this, because there are breed organizations who demand for a sample to be tested at the patent holders’ lab.
Our goal is making patented DNA tests available for a broad public again, not being withheld of testing samples by the high charges. We will keep informing our clients about the developments on this specific subject.