I don't believe these things work the way you are assuming they do. Unjust behavior by the part of big corporations like Prometheus need to be stopped at the root and at first sight.
Please never hope that the triumph of someone over you in argument, specially one that that gives them a new weapon to fight you, will eventually and reliably become a weakness in their defenses.
I'll try to explain why I think so without using analogies, since they almost always break arguments apart. I hope that by sticking to this particular case I am not interpreted as someone trying to straightly so predict the future but as someone making a point.
Let's say that Prometheus wins this, thus having the possibility of using this case to patent medical procedures and the using of statistical correlations. You are assuming that big pharmaceuticals will use this to stop lots of doctors from rightfully saving lives using what is now standard medical procedure... but I believe big pharmaceuticals are doing just fine now, and are not stupid enough to piss off the whole US population. What I would do if I were them is to extend the validity of the patent on a drug (in the case describe in the article it is thiopurine) by using another related patent that hasn't expired yet and that covers a procedure. This won't send a substantially higher number of Bobbys to the grave, but it won't reduce the cost of each non-dying Bobby to not-die, which is what one supposes eventually happens when patents on a Bobby-death-stopping drug expires and hence the drug can be manufactured generically or by competing big pharmaceutical labs.
So, in the end they get to make more money in the long run (since patents can be made to last longer) and things don't get worse for Bobby and the people, they just don't get as better as they should.
I agree with you whole-heartedly on these patents. But... I think the point that you're missing is that the Supreme Court is like a meta-court. You don't go there to appeal your case, you go there to appeal specific decisions and interpretations of the law.
IMO, from a lawyers vantage point, what is the difference between a patent covering a software method (like encoding music) and a medical procedure? There really isn't any. Both are equally offensive to the folks who practice in these fields -- I have yet to meet a programmer in favor of software patents, and I'm sure doctors will feel the same way.
The problem is that the law as written is that software patents ARE ok. As long as that is true, how could any judge make a case that medical procedures are not?
Please never hope that the triumph of someone over you in argument, specially one that that gives them a new weapon to fight you, will eventually and reliably become a weakness in their defenses.
I'll try to explain why I think so without using analogies, since they almost always break arguments apart. I hope that by sticking to this particular case I am not interpreted as someone trying to straightly so predict the future but as someone making a point.
Let's say that Prometheus wins this, thus having the possibility of using this case to patent medical procedures and the using of statistical correlations. You are assuming that big pharmaceuticals will use this to stop lots of doctors from rightfully saving lives using what is now standard medical procedure... but I believe big pharmaceuticals are doing just fine now, and are not stupid enough to piss off the whole US population. What I would do if I were them is to extend the validity of the patent on a drug (in the case describe in the article it is thiopurine) by using another related patent that hasn't expired yet and that covers a procedure. This won't send a substantially higher number of Bobbys to the grave, but it won't reduce the cost of each non-dying Bobby to not-die, which is what one supposes eventually happens when patents on a Bobby-death-stopping drug expires and hence the drug can be manufactured generically or by competing big pharmaceutical labs.
So, in the end they get to make more money in the long run (since patents can be made to last longer) and things don't get worse for Bobby and the people, they just don't get as better as they should.