[mokus]

This really sounds like hair splitting to me. Along the lines of saying "well, your software patent is for a program that is stored on a GMR disk platter. Mine's stored in NAND flash, and that's never been done before!"

If the sequence is logically equivalent but stored on a different medium, how is that novel? The invention of the new medium or new techniques for transcribing between media may be, but the sequence itself isn't.

[rcthompson]

Not exactly. DNA and RNA are structurally only slightly different, but functionally, in the context of a biological system, they are very different. A technical analogy might be RAM vs disk.