Biotech Patents in the EU
In December of last year, the European Commission (EC) appointed a team of experts to examine the development and implications of patent law in the field of biotechnology and genetic engineering. Made up of fifteen individuals with expertise in the areas of intellectual property law, research and development, life sciences and biotechnology, the main purpose of this group has been to provide the EC with legal and technical expertise on the Biotech Patent Directive, with regard to “patentable” biotechnological innovations.
Over the past few years, biotechnological inventions are among the ten largest technical fields in terms of patent applications filed with the European Patent Office (EPO). But biotechnology patent laws are not always clear. Discoveries which do not extend “human ability”, for example, but only “human knowledge”, are not considered patentable.
According to regulations, a genome sequence cannot be protected by a patent unless it falls under the category of a “new” DNA sequence that has been isolated from nature or produced by technical means and can be shown to have a commercial application. Last year the EC agreed that patents for inventions comprised of, or based on, gene sequences should be included as patentable. But with the development of new techniques facilitating genomic sequencing, the experts role will include advising the EC on how this will affect biotech patents.
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