A legal perspective synthetic biolegy ownership

Pantents are a hot topic in synthetic bioligy and will be for years to come.

Such discussions are often marred by lack of legal knowledge and insigth. In order to improve the elevate the level of legal knowledge of biological patents we have to produce this page Since pantent law is complicated subject that v we decided to constrain ourselves to european patents law. We hope it will help the synthetic biolegy comunity form a more balanced opinion that will help both scientist and legislators to produce simpler and fairer rules.

Introduction

The basic idea behind pantents is a simple one: an inventor who applies for, and is granted, a patent is given a 20 year monopoly on the invention specified in the patent application. In return for this he is obliged to disclose the details of his invention so other can learn from it and improve upon it. Such improvements are in turn patentable but anyone who would like to use an improvement must, in most cases, be licensed by the holders of both patents.

The common justification for such a system is that it stimulates innovation. It does this by protecting the large investments that are often required to develop a new patentable product. Without the protection a patent can offer companies or individual posses would have to go to great lengths to keep the details of their invention secret.

Over the last few year there has been much addoo about biological patents But over the last decades the addtion of GMO to the mix has created much controversy. 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

Some historian argue that patent law originated as early as the italian renaisance but the use of patents as a means of protecting investment was never aplied on large scale until after the second world war. Since then the the number patents granted worldwide has exploded. According to data from the World Intellectual Property Organization over 1.5 million patents where granted world wide last year alone. This number contains many duplicate patents since a patent is not global: its needs to be requested in almost every courty separately.

Although patent law differs greatly from country to country some aspects are harmonized by the TRIPS agreement which most countries in the world have signed. In this way, patent holders have at least some garantee that their pantent are treated with similar respect in different countries where they have applied for them.

What action do patents restrict?

What action do patents not restrict?

You can still us patented cells for research purposes

European patent law

The first thing to note about european patents is that there is formaly no such thing. Pantents in europe are still first and formost a national affair. Each country has its own separate laws and regulations on the subject. So when we refer to European patent law what we actually mean is a patchwork of several international agreements in addtion to before mentioned many national laws. The most important of these agreements are:

The European Patent Convention (In force since October 7th 1977)
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 applicable for these 27 members. Below is a quick description of each of these treaties:

European Patent Convention

The European Patent Convention (EPC from here on) covers mostly Procedural Law(Rules that descripe how ). It formulates very little substantial law.

Of special intrest are articles 53b and C of the EPC

 European patents shall not be granted in respect of:  
 [...]
 (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.

In article b a casual reader migth mean to see that

Directive 98/44/EC

European directives are legal acts that require european member states to make their national legislation conform to certain requirments. Most of the time this means ajusting existing regulations but sometimes it requires member states to make new laws or even scrap existing ones. Directive 98/44/EC tries to harmonize legal protection of biotechnological inventions. It governs:

Limits to Patentability
Scope of Protection
Licensing (How other peoples can you use your patents by paying for them)
Deposit, access and re-deposit of biological material

Especcially article Article 13 It States that:

Convention on Biological Diversity

Addtionaly to the substantive body of the agreement, it establishes established three international governing organisations namely:

Conference of the Parties: The body of all the nations participating in the Convention, the main legi
Secretariat: The Conventions adminstrative body, based in montreal
Subsidiary body for Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA): Advises the Conference of the Parties on

Over the years These bodies have produced a steady trickle of protocols and conventions for participation countries to follow but very little of it is effect actual national patent legislation.

Practical patent law

In practice patent law is rarely working as it was invisioned. Patent bureau's quite often grant papents on technolegy that was either alreaddy published, or subject to local or international exemtions on patentabilety. This happens for three reasons:

The pantenting authoreties cannot review all the worlds publications and sometime aproves patents on idea's that have alreaddy been published in some obscure material(Some companies have low circulation publications exacly for this purpose) Most of the time the pantenting office start with reviewing only exiting pantents, this can alreaddy be quite a challange with many languages and systems publication. Checking the Chineese patent database for instance, is still quite a chalange for a european patent agency. It is for this reason that duplicate patents still occur very rarely.
The pantenting authoreties has limited amount of resources. At some point of the patent cannot find a valid reason to withhold a patent (even though they)

In Euprope the EPC actually gives parties to oportunity to chalenge a pantent in court before it is granted (while not)

The pantenting authoreties sometimes do not have the technical knowledge required to understand the submitted patent fully. This is especially the case in fields such as synthetic biolegy where sometimes dificult to see the full implications of a patent. The before mentioned problems

In some industries, most notably the software industry, companies have taken a quatitative approuch to patent law. Since all of them have so many patent that every other company is bount to accidentally infringe on some of them This is costing

Team:Groningen/human practices legal perspective

From 2011.igem.org