Medical research to be affected by ECJ ruling?
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has dismissed a challenge by the Netherlands to a 1998 EU directive on biotechnology patents. The directive, passed in 1998 and due to be transposed into Member State legislation in July 2000, allows companies to take out patents on biotechnology inventions from animal, human or plant sources, under certain conditions. The Netherlands, backed by Italy and Norway, challenged the directive, saying that it effectively undermined human dignity by allowing patenting of parts of the human body. The Court dismissed the challenge, clarifying that only procedures drawn from human parts, and not the human parts themselves, can be patented. It gave the example that the discovery of gene would not be patentable, but the use of that gene in subsequent industrial procedures could be. The Court added that it felt that the directive gave 'sufficient protection' to prevent the human body becoming a patentable invention. Some concern had been voiced by those backing the Dutch challenge that private companies' medical research could be patented, making public research in the same area either more expensive or impossible. The attorney general, Francis Jacobs, claimed that the interpretation of the challenge had been incorrect. But the supporters of the challenge, including the Green party, were reported to be shocked by the decision.