The Burrill Report

Europe’s highest court says that scientific researchers in the European Union cannot patent inventions relying on the destruction of human embryos.

The ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union won’t prevent the use of human embryos in research. But it does make the funding of such research significantly less attractive for commercial entities, since the results will not be able to secure intellectual property protection.

“With this unfortunate decision, the fruits of years of translational research by European scientists will be wiped away and left to the non-European countries,” said Oliver Brüstle, Director of the Institute for Reconstructive Neurology at the University of Bonn, in a comment to EuroStemCell, an association of European stem cell and regenerative medicine research labs.

The decision arises out of a dispute in which Greenpeace sought to invalidate a 1997 patent awarded to Brüstle for the isolation and purification of neural precursor cells produced from human embryonic stem cells used to treat neurological diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease. Greenpeace argued that the use of precursor cells derived from human embryos violates elements of both European Union and international laws that forbid the patenting of inventions for which commercial use could be considered contrary to public order or morality.

The court reviewed the question of whether legal concepts forbidding the granting of patents on uses of human embryos for industrial or commercial purposes also cover the use of human embryos for purposes of scientific research. It decided “the grant of a patent for an invention implies, in principle, its industrial or commercial application.”

The use of human embryos for therapeutic or diagnostic purposes applied to the human embryo, such as to correct a malformation and improve the chances of life will remain patentable.

October 21, 2011
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-eu_high_court_bans_embryonic_stem_cell_patents.html