GregNews on CA oncomouse case

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

The Candian Supreme court decreed a few days ago that

  (1) Patents don't necessarily spur innovation and the emergence of
      new kinds of innovations does not mean that these should be
      patentable.
  (2) Without a clear mandate from the legislator the patent courts
      may not decide that a higher-level living organism can be an
      object of a patent claim, but rather must reject such claims.

As could be expected, GregNews is quite unhappy about the decision:

>  They talk about distinguishing between lower life forms and higher life
>  forms, admitting that there are no clear distinctions, in light of their
>  recognition of the patentability of lower life forms in Canada.  (At this
>  point, the Court passed up an opportunity to comment about politicians :-).
>  They recognized that the Patent Office's rejection was in opposition to
>  the fact that many other countries have granted Harvard its patent.
>
>  Much like the idiocy of software copyright, you have a court struggling
>  to decide an issue of law and science where the law is ill-defined.
>  The decision is a fun read in science, law and philosophy, if you have
>  the time.

Indeed the proponents of the oncomouse patent had argued that "all
these European countries have granted this patent, and only Canada is
making a fuss of it", where "all these European countries" were a list
of member states of the EPO, on whose behalf the EPO had decided that
claims to an animate being were acceptable.  I wonder whether the EPO
also had to decide about "animate product" claims.

GregNews also reports that other Canadian courts at the same time
upheld a patent on drugs for AIDS.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608   
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
130,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/