Myriad, the company that owns the BRCA patents, has been the only player in town for almost 20 years.
There is currently a case before the Supreme Court trying to invalidate Myriad's patents, as well as all patents on human DNA.
The issue, however, is that Myriad's value is no longer in their patents, but in the data they collected over the past 20 years.
Myriad charges ~$3k for their tests, while a full sequence of your entire genome is only ~$5k, and will tell you the same genetic data. But Myriad has been able to correlate much more of your DNA and the BRCA regions with cancer risk, and that data is not public.
There is currently a case before the Supreme Court trying to invalidate Myriad's patents, as well as all patents on human DNA.
The issue, however, is that Myriad's value is no longer in their patents, but in the data they collected over the past 20 years.
Myriad charges ~$3k for their tests, while a full sequence of your entire genome is only ~$5k, and will tell you the same genetic data. But Myriad has been able to correlate much more of your DNA and the BRCA regions with cancer risk, and that data is not public.
23andMe is definitely not a substitute.
For anyone interested in the patents and the current Supreme Court case, check out: http://www.genomicslawreport.com/index.php/2013/05/01/some-t...
That's a great blog on genomics and the law, and there are other interesting blog posts on Myriad if you look through their archive.