The American Bar Association (ABA) has made a response to a statement made by China’s State Intellectual Property Organization (SIPO). The statement, focused on the scope of patent rights, allows patents in these areas: scientific discoveries; rules and methods for mental activities; methods for the diagnosis of or the treatment of diseases; animal and plant varieties; and substances obtained by means of nuclear transformation.
However, the laws do not allow for the patenting of, in the words of the ABA, “any new, useful, and non-obvious non-human multi-cellular organisms, including both plants and non-human animals.” The Bar Association feels that China should accept these patents for several reasons: making non-human organisms patentable will promote research, encourage investment in said research, and that allowing these patents in America has not led to the patenting of humans.
The first two points dig at one of China’s main concerns, a lack of innovation (see post by China Law Blog). The third point tries to appease the moral concern behind patenting animals—that the patenting of non-sentient life forms will eventually lead to the patenting of human parts or of genetically engineered humans.
Just to play the devil’s advocate, I have to say that patenting other life forms hasn’t led to the patenting of human life yet. It could still happen. On the other hand, being able to patent new varieties of chicken can result in more research.
I’ll be honest, I don't know if patenting animals and other living organisms is a great idea. Perhaps that's just because I don’t understand the whole argument for adding this type of patent to the law. Making a better chicken just doesn’t seem all that important to me, and I’ve seen too many movies about the evils of creating life. Though I do feel that China needs to improve is intellectual property protection, I would personally prefer that SIPO just works harder at enforcing existing laws instead of adding new ones.
