Europe divided
by essentially
biological
processes
Following in the footsteps of the Netherlands and
Germany, France is the latest European country to table
changes to its national law to exclude from patentability
products which are made by essentially biological
processes. This move is at odds with case law from the
Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) of the European Patent
Office (EPO) and will come as good news for farmers
and breeders’ associations, but bad news for the
biotech industry.
By way of background, the European Patent Convention sets out that “essentially
biological processes” for producing plants or animals are excluded from patentability.
Back in 2010 in the combined “Tomato I” and “Broccoli I” cases, G2/07 and G1/08,
the EBA ruled that adding a technical step to a process for making new plants would
not avoid the exclusion if the technical step merely enables or assists an essentially
biological process.
Life Sciences & Chemistry
14
IP review
autumn
2016
