Page:Amgen Inc. v. Sanofi.pdf/20

16 While the technology at the heart of this case is thoroughly modern, from the law’s perspective Amgen’s claims bear more than a passing resemblance to those this Court faced long ago in Morse, Incandescent Lamp, and Holland Furniture. Amgen seeks to monopolize an entire class of things defined by their function—every antibody that both binds to particular areas of the sweet spot of PCSK9 and blocks PCSK9 from binding to LDL receptors. The record reflects that this class of antibodies does not include just the 26 that Amgen has described by their amino acid sequences, but a “vast” number of additional antibodies that it has not. 987 F. 3d, at 1085, 1088; see 2019 WL 4058927, *8 (“at least millions of candidates”); see also Tr. of Oral Arg. 52–53. Much as Morse sought to claim all telegraphic forms of communication, Sawyer and Man sought to claim all fibrous and textile materials for incandescence, and Perkins sought to claim all starch glues that work as well as animal glue for wood veneering, Amgen seeks to claim “sovereignty over [an] entire kingdom” of antibodies. Incandescent Lamp, 159 U. S., at 476.

That poses Amgen with a challenge. For if our cases teach anything, it is that the more a party claims, the broader the monopoly it demands, the more it must enable. That holds true whether the case involves telegraphs devised in the 19th century, glues invented in the 20th, or antibody treatments developed in the 21st. To be fair, Amgen does not dispute this much. It freely admits that it seeks to claim for itself an entire universe of antibodies. Still, it says, its broad claims are enabled because scientists can make and use every undisclosed but functional antibody if they simply follow the company’s “roadmap” or its proposal for “conservative substitution.”

We cannot agree. These two approaches amount to little more than two research assignments. The first merely describes step-by-step Amgen’s own trial-and-error method for finding functional antibodies—calling on scientists to