ABSTRACT
Of all the questions to emerge over biotechnology, none has proved more controversial than patenting. Once scientists developed the skills to identify genes and manipulate them, to what extent did that allow them to claim these genetic sequences and constructs, and the organisms which they embodied, as patentable inventions? In what way were such biotechnological advances the same as inventions in the engineering or chemical industries, and in what way different? A heated debate has raged for many years between the biotechnology industry and patent lawyers, on the one hand, and a wide variety of objectors, on the other. The debate first came to prominence over genetically modified animals, when the US Patent Office granted a patent in 1988 on the Harvard oncomouse, described in Case Study 10. In Europe, much of the controversy has centred on the European Union Directive, but the questions it raises go far beyond the legal technicalities of intellectual property, ranging from the role of commerce as a driver of biotechnology to the very nature of living things and human exploitation.
