News Patents and designs 2000

Transgenic plants patentability.

A decision of the Enlarged Board of Appeal of EPO
June 16, 2000

The Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European patent Office recently issued a relevant Decision (G1/98) related to the patentability of transgenic plants.

Main points are:

I. A claim wherein specific plant varieties are not individually claimed is not excluded from patentability under Article 53(b)EPC, even though it may embrace plant varieties.

II. When a claim to a process for the production of a plant variety is examined, Article 64(2)EPC is not to be taken into consideration.

III. The exception to patentability in Article 53(b),first half-sentence, EPC applies to plant varieties irrespective of the way in which they were produced. Therefore, plant varieties containing genes introduced into an ancestral plant by recombinant gene technology are excluded from patentability.

 

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