Munich

The European Patent Office (EPO) has upheld the patent on the Harvard oncomouse, a mouse strain genetically engineered to be susceptible to cancer.

But the patent office has restricted the breadth of the Harvard University patent — which currently covers all animals that are genetically engineered using the oncomouse technology — to cover only rodents.

More than 100 organizations and individuals had registered their opposition to the patent, which sparked intense controversy when it came into force in 1992.

“The appeal board felt that it was impossible to assume that the balance between benefit to society and suffering to the mouse could be automatically extended to all types of animals,” says Christian Guggerell, the EPO's spokesman on biopatents.

Opponents of the patent consider this to be a tacit admission of unacceptable animal suffering. “The EPO's position lacks logic, both ethically and legally,” says Greenpeace spokesman Christoph Then.

The decision is the first to be made by the EPO on an appeal against an animal patent since it adopted the European Union's 1998 directive on biopatents. A moratorium on patents on life had been in effect for two years before that, as the EPO awaited ethical guidelines from the European Union.

The directive allows such patents to be awarded if the benefit to society is deemed greater than the suffering to the animals. Since the directive was adopted, the EPO has granted 20 further patents on animals.