The problem has been the failure of the Patent Office to recognize the follow-on products as derivatives.
]]>The recent Amazon.com case is a lead indicator that these things are now subject to more scrutiny than before and you may see more of these claims rejected as derivative rather than original.
Now that there is a database of these “creations” the Patent Office can look at the application and say that the organism was obvious derived from earlier work rather than an original creation. Every time there’s a new field opened up it takes the Office a while to have enough information to judge, but that time is coming.
They have already shut off the extensions the drug companies were getting for minor alterations in patented drugs, so bio-tech is going to hit the same wall.
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