"Edinburgh Patent"
In 1993, inventors Austin Smith and Peter Mountford of the University of Edinburgh filed a
UK patent application directed at methods of selecting for animal stem cells, including embryonic stem cells.
The description defined animal as including human and hence the new technology enabled isolation of desired
human stem cells based on linking a differentially expressed gene to a selectable marker. Little did we know
that this case would later be introduced by the Chairman of the Opposition Division as "The most important in
the history of the European Patent Office".
A European patent application was filed and pursued and in February 2000, shortly after the
patent had been granted, Greenpeace filed an opposition and built a bricks and mortar wall across the
entrance to the European Patent Office building in Munich (leaving bemused visitors and staff to come
and go via the underground car-park). The accusation was that the patent covered human cloning; the
Edinburgh Patent case had begun.
There were 13 opponents to grant of the patent, all objecting that the claims were contrary to
morality in that they embraced both methods carried out on human embryonic stem (ES) cells and also human ES
cells per se - an immediate amendment had clarified that human cloning was nothing to do with this case. The
EPO Opposition Division held that human ES cells and processes carried
out on human ES cells are not patentable in Europe as they are contrary to morality, specifically in that such
an invention constitutes commercial or industrial use of a human embryo. This decision was upheld in parallel
proceedings in the "WARF Case" (G 2/06). The Edinburgh Patent itself was maintained in amended form.
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