Re: NO PATENTS ON LIFE Petition, Council for Responsable Genetics

Mike Kenzie (news-relay.ncren.net!newsgate.duke.edu!agate!usenet.kornet.nm.kr!howland.erols.nMike Kenzie)
13 Apr 1997 16:42:18 GMT

Tracy Aquilla (taquilla@erols.com) writes:
> In Article <jtoth-0804971629550001@wash2-11.fairfield.com>,
> jtoth@fairfield.com (Joe Toth) wrote:
>>CONVERTING LIFE FORMS INTO CORPORATE PROPERTY
>>By Jonathan King
...
>>In the early 1980s, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the
>>Chakrabarty case that genetically modified microorganisms could be
>>patented. This opened up the floodgates, and since then thousands
>>of patents on genes, cells, and even entire organisms have been
>>granted by the patent office.
>
> The Supreme Court held in Chakrabarty: "A live, human-made micro-organism
> is patentable subject matter under @ 101. Respondent's micro-organism
> constitutes a "manufacture" or "composition of matter" within that statute."
> Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303. This case clearly outlines 35 USC @
> 101, describing what is patentable in layman's terms and in great detail.
>
> For something to be patentable, according to US law, it must have been
> created by the individual claiming the invention. This means it must be
> man-made. Thus, restating the above more accurately, it is only artificial
> copies (cDNAs) of gene products, genetically transformed cell cultures, or
> novel organisms having useful man-made traits (all of which clearly exist in
> an unnatural isolated state and are man-made inventions), that are patentable.

I wonder if the people holding patents on organisms will also be held
responsible for the actions of these organisms?
Who owns the outcome of a sexual union between patented organisms?

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