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Craig Venter has created a bacterium called Synthia that has an artificial genome. But what protection should be afforded to the creators of this synthetic DNA? Criticism of Venter’s patent application has been forthcoming, particularly from Sir John Sulston.
European Directive 98/44 EC explicitly said that biotech patents can be granted, although certain things including plant or animal varieties or the discovery of human genes were not patentable. However, the specific drafting of a claim is a different matter, and Venter’s patent’s claims were originally very broad.
Venter’s patent application is being examined by the EPO. Objections to the initial application were made by the examiner in April 2009, which the examiner said were “such that there is no possibility of overcoming them by amendment”. A reply was filed in February 2010, reducing the claims from 28 to 20, and having spent a reported $40 million to create the synthetic DNA, there is no doubt that Synthetic Genomics, the company in whose name the patent was filed, will fight hard to get all the patent protection it can get. It will be interesting to see whether any patents they end up with in Europe do protect anything of monetary worth.
As has been widely reported this week, some 3,000 UK workers are taking part in a six month trial to assess the viability of a four-day working week without any reduction in their normal pay.
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In Nissan v Passi, the High Court recently considered the issue of an employee retaining confidential documents belonging to his former employer in the context of the employer’s application for an injunction seeking the return of such documents from the employee.
The UK government is considering extending this power to depart from retained EU case law to additional lower courts and tribunals, namely the Court of Appeal in England and Wales and the High Court of Justice in England and Wales and their equivalents.
Lord Justice Arnold has applied the guidance of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to the evidence before him, in the long standing trade mark dispute between Sky and Skykick.
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