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Nature 405, 610-612 (8 June 2000) | doi:10.1038/35015249

Open Innovation Challenges

Cloning's owners go to war

Peter Aldhous1

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The team that created Dolly the sheep captured the headlines, but several groups now have patents on cloning. Peter Aldhous considers how this tangled web of proprietary claims will affect the future of the technology.

To the uninitiated, it seemed like an arcane scientific argument. In September 1998, some 18 months after Dolly the cloned sheep was unveiled to the world, her creators issued a challenge.