What does U.S. patent policy say about gene patenting?
• 1980 Diamond v. Chakrabarty Prior to 1980, life forms were considered a part of nature and were not patentable. Diamond v Chakrabarty changed this with the 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision that genetically engineered (modified) bacteria were patentable because they did not occur naturally in nature. In this case, Chakrabarty had modified a bacteria to create an oil-dissolving bioengineered microbe. • Since Diamond v. Chakrabarty, patents have been issued on whole genes whose function is known. More recently inventors began to seek patents on sequences of DNA that were less than a whole gene. The Patent Office is currently developing guidelines on how to deal with these fragments since they often do not have a known function. • Some patents have already been granted for fragments of DNA. That presents the problem of someone trying to patent a larger fragment or gene that contains the already patented sequence. Questions have been raised as to whether the second inventor will need to ob
