Miscellaneous

Patents: Monsanto Co. v. McFarling

By Bill Gratsch

Another post from my RSS reader that caught my eye this morning was Kevin Noonan's comprehensive post Supreme Court Fails to Grant Certiorari in Monsanto Co. v. McFarling.    Posted to Patent Docs, Mr. Noonan starts by noting:

Once recombinant cells were deemed to constitute patentable subject matter by the U.S. Supreme Court in Diamond v. Chakrabarty, fundamental properties of such cells began to pose new challenges to traditional patent law concepts.  One such property is that these cells were capable of replicating to produce copies of themselves.  Unlike mechanical devices that are governed by conventional distinctions between repairing a patented device and reconstructing it (see Aro Manufacturing Co., Inc. v. Convertible Top Replacement Co., Inc., 365 U.S. 336 (1961)), the nature of a recombinant cell is to produce more recombinant cells.  To paraphrase an old adage, if you give a man a recombinant cell (or, more typically, about 10,000,000 recombinant cells), you have given him recombinant cells forever.

This unique property of cells has raised some interesting legal questions. 

Questions that Mr. Noonan then explores in the rest of his post, while also referencing the Monsanto Co. v. McFarling matter.

Good stuff.

Full post as published by Blawgs Blog by Bill Gratsch on January 08, 2008 (boomark / email).