EU court adviser urges limits to bio-patent protection
09 March 2010
Emma Barraclough, London
A senior legal adviser to Europe’s highest court says that protection for patents over a DNA sequence should be limited to situations where the genetic information is performing the functions described in the patent
In his opinion in a dispute between Monsanto and a group of Argentine soya growers, Advocate General Mengozzi advised the Court to rule that patented DNA can only be protected as a chemical substance where it performs the function for which it is patented.
This is the first case where the Court of justice has been asked to interpret the scope of EU legislation on the protection of biotechnological inventions.
The dispute began when agrichemical company Monsanto asked a Dutch court to bock imports of soy meal into...
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