ABSTRACT
Patents cost a lot of money and nobody would file a patent for a thing which cannot possibly be admitted to the market. Big industry has more power than small industry and also holds more patents, the ratio in biotechnology being about two-thirds to one-third. But this gives us as much insight as saying that a fat man is heavier than a thin one. Patents are indeed a part of what we call industrial property. The Opposition Division was thus quite right in making the point that patents covering DNA encoding for human Relaxin, or any other human gene, do not confer on the patent owner any rights whatever to individual human beings or to parts of them. Poisons, explosives, extremely dangerous chemical substances, devices used in nuclear power stations, agro-chemicals, pesticides and many other things which can threaten human life or damage the environment have been patented, despite the existence of the public order and morality bar.
