Supreme Court hears arguments on definition of 'cocaine base', patent rights

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website, JURIST news archive] heard oral arguments [day call, PDF] Monday in DePierre v. United States [oral arguments transcript, PDF; JURIST report] on whether the term "cocaine base" in the Federal Sentencing Guidelines [materials] is limited to "crack" cocaine or encompasses all forms of cocaine chemically classified as a base. The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled [opinion, PDF] that "cocaine base" refers to "all forms of cocaine base, including, but…