This article details the “10-year-long saga” concerning whether Dolly the Cloned Sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, could be patented. In 2014, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled against granting a patent to Dolly’s creators in In re Roslin Institute. Though Dolly’s creators did receive a patent on the method used to create Dolly, they were denied a patent on Dolly herself.
The Court of Appeals aligned its decision with past cases, such as Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics and even Diamond v. Chakrabarty. Essentially, Dolly could not be patented because she was identical to animals found in nature, her “genetic identity to her donor parent render[ed] her unpatentable.”
The article went on to discuss the broader potential implications of the decision as related to biomedical research. As a result of the case, some feared that if the Patent and Trademark Office is unwilling to grant patents on human-made products that are genetically the same as products of nature, then personalized medicine will not continue to be researched. This could have detrimental effects on ideas like cells modified to resemble human stem cells or lab-grown organs. Other scholars noted that perhaps the case would not have such far-reaching consequences, due to the fact that this case was broadly drafted.
This article and issue surrounding it made me think of the Henrietta Lacks cell line story. The general storyline is that scientists used to have an extremely hard time keeping human cells alive in cultures to run tests on them. Then in 1951 cells were taken from a cervical tumor in Henrietta Lacks that were then found to be “immortal.” This meant that the cells could be divided infinitely without the newly created cells dying quickly or not being able to be divided again. These cells were taken without the consent of Henrietta Lacks, which has created a lot of controversy. As of today scientists have grown and estimated 20 tons of what they call HeLa cells, and there are almost 11,000 current patents involving these cells. Ultimately, I feel like this bring up the question that your article started addressing which is where do we draw the line on allowing intellectual property protection to living things.
This is incredibly interesting, I too thought of Henrietta Lacks and the concept of consent when it comes to the replication and seizing of our cells/body parts. I thought it was interesting too that many new inventions are being held “not unpatentable” which may suggest a swing toward allowing for patents in order to encourage innovation on this front.
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=9d5677e6-b0c8-4fb6-a650-55a45428be27