Team:Groningen/human practices legal perspective

Introduction

Over the last few year there has been much addoo about intelectual properties

This section of our wiki tries to give biolegist a understandable legal perspective on the current state of patent law in europe. It does this by ex For

Patent law in general

Patents The main justification for a patent system is to protect the investments required to develop a new method

Some historian argue that patent law originated as early as the itallian renaisance but

According to data from the World Intellectual Property Organization over 1.5 million patents where granted world wide last year alone. This number of course contains many

• New (unpubli)

Patent versus Copyrigth

What action do patents restrict?

What action do patents not restrict?

• You can still us patented cells for research purposes

Eurpepean patent law

European Patent law is governed by a several international agreements in addtion to a great many national laws. The most important of these are:

• The European Patent Convention (In force since October 7th 1977, newest revistion)
• The TRIPS agreement (In effect since January 1st 1995)

Addtionally biological patents specifcally are heavely influenced by:

• Directive 98/44/EC (In force since Juli 30th 1998)
• Convention on Biological Diversity (In effect since 29th December 1993)

While some of these law sources extend beyond the current 27 member of the european union they are all

A quick description of each of these treaties:

The European Patent Convention covers mostly

It States that:

European Patent Convention article 53

European patents shall not be granted in respect of: (a) inventions the commercial exploitation of which would be contrary to "ordre public" or morality; such exploitation shall not be deemed to be so contrary merely because it is prohibited by law or regulation in some or all of the Contracting States; (b) plant or animal varieties or essentially biological processes for the production of plants or animals; this provision shall not apply to microbiological processes or the products thereof; (c) methods for treatment of the human or animal body by surgery or therapy and diagnostic methods practised on the human or animal body; this provision shall not apply to products, in particular substances or compositions, for use in any of these methods.