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How Europe's ethical divide looms over biotech law and patents

Nature Biotechnology volume 30, pages 392–394 (2012)Cite this article

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To the Editor:

The recent decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU; Luxembourg) on stem cell patents startled the scientific community, and the role of the nongovernmental organization Greenpeace (Germany) in this process has raised eyebrows. Indeed, more shocks of this kind can be expected in the future, as political factions capitalize on the ambiguities and tensions written into the European Union's (EU; Brussels) Biotechnology Directive of 1998 (ref. 1) and into the ethics and public morality provisions of the European Patent Convention.

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Figure 1

References

  1. Directive 98/44/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 6 July 1998 on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions, Official Journal L 213, 30/07/1998, 13–21.

  2. EPO. Foreword. in Annual Report (European Patent Office, Munich, 1991).

  3. Gaskell, G. et al. Europeans and Biotechnology in 2010: Winds of Change? (European Commission Publications, Brussels, 2010).

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  4. Monsanto v. Cefetra (2010) ECR 7.

  5. Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office, Decision of 6 July 2004, T 315/03 (2004).

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Acknowledgements

Analysis of the Eurobarometer survey was supported by the project 'Sensitive Technologies and European Public Ethics' (STEPE), funded by the Science in Society Programme of the European Commission's FP7 (http://www.stepe.eu/).

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  1. London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

    George Gaskell, Sally Stares & Alain Pottage

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  1. George Gaskell
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  2. Sally Stares
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Correspondence to George Gaskell.

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Gaskell, G., Stares, S. & Pottage, A. How Europe's ethical divide looms over biotech law and patents. Nat Biotechnol 30, 392–394 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2201

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