WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court sided with a university Tuesday in a fight with a researcher over who owns human cancer tissue.

The justices without comment let stand lower-court rulings that said Washington University in Missouri owns the tissue. Thousands of patients provided lab specimens to Dr. William Catalona before he left the university and moved to Northwestern University in Illinois in 2003.

Catalona's old university sued after thousands of Catalona's patients asked the institution to send their tissue to the prostate-cancer researcher, one of the pre-eminent urologists in the country.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis and a federal district judge ruled that the patients relinquished all rights to their tissues and said Washington University owned them.

Lawyers for Catalona and seven of his patients who joined him in the court fight say that institutions that receive federal money are barred from getting research subjects to waive any of their legal rights.