Cook, Trevor --- "Patenting Genes" [2006] ELECD 331; in Pugatch, Perez Meir (ed), "The Intellectual Property Debate" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: The Intellectual Property Debate

Editor(s): Pugatch, Perez Meir

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845420383

Section: Chapter 11

Section Title: Patenting Genes

Author(s): Cook, Trevor

Number of pages: 24

Extract:

11. Patenting genes
Trevor Cook

INTRODUCTION

Genes, and the proteins for which they code, have much in common. They
are both types of chemical, and they are both found in the body, and yet they
elicit very different attitudes when it comes to their patenting. Although it is
through proteins by which the body operates, it has been genes, and not pro-
teins, which have caused the greatest controversy in the patent world. Yet
genes by themselves do little, their importance lying in the fact that they are
stretches of DNA that contain the code which specifies the sequence of
amino acids making up each of the tens of thousands of different proteins,
and which do the work by which the body functions. Why then should genes
have apparently caused so many problems for the patent community?
Moreover why should the issue be of such current interest, when there have
for many years been patents with claims to gene sequences, some of which
indeed are so old that they have now expired?1 This chapter explores these
issues from the perspectives of European and United States patent laws.2
Genes and proteins are both products of nature, and, having exemplified
some of the patent claims found in so-called `gene patents', this chapter con-
tinues with a discussion of the issues raised by seeking to patent them as
products of nature, and how the European and United States patent systems,
in broadly similar ways, address these. It then discusses some ...