A small biotech firm in Orange County is going up against a major company over the rights to a popular genetic test that can detect breast cancer.

Myriad Genetics of Salt Lake City last week filed a lawsuit against Ambry Genetics of Aliso Viejo and a Houston company after both rushed to offer the test immediately following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month that human genes cannot be patented.

The high court declared in a case involving Myriad that genes are a product of nature and cannot be claimed as a type of private property. The landmark decision was being watched closely by medical researchers, patient advocates and biotech and pharmaceutical companies.

Ambry had been anticipating the ruling and quickly seized on it, starting to offer its test within days of the decision and proclaiming "your genes are still free" with a photo of the Supreme Court Building underneath it on the company's website. It even has plans to put the image on T-shirts.

There were no problems for a few weeks. But, now the future appears less clear amid the looming legal fight. Ambry, which launched in 1999 and has 200 employees, said it would "vigorously defend" itself against the suit.

"The Supreme Court ruled on exactly this," said Charles Dunlop, Ambry chief executive. "I don't know what they're doing other than just bullying people."

But Myriad said the lawsuit has nothing to do with the high court's decision on gene patenting. Instead, the company said it focused on 10 patent violations in Ambry's testing methods. It made the same accusations against the Houston company, Gene by Gene.

There is increasing interest from consumers in breast cancer tests, especially since actress Angelina Jolie announced she underwent a double mastectomy based on the findings of such a test.

In cases in which a family member has a positive test result, the analysis will look for the mutation. If there is no family history, it will look at the entire sequence of two genes, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2. Until last month Myriad held a monopoly on the test because it owned the patenting rights to the two genes.

At stake are billions of dollars in sales.

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O.C. biotech firm is sued by major rival over breast cancer test

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