Word: patents
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...biotechnology labs across the country, researchers hailed the decision as long overdue. Last week the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded a patent to Harvard University for the development of a genetically engineered mouse. Although plants and bacteria have been patented for years, the Harvard award was the first ever for an animal. On Capitol Hill, however, angry Congressmen promptly called for a two-year halt to any future animal patents until the risks and benefits can be better assessed. Fumed Republican Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon: "The Patent Office is playing fast and loose with a serious issue...
...patent does absolutely nothing to further research," Weissman says. "All that this can do is to decrease the flow of research communication between labs...
Legislators also fear that the patent office's action will open the floodgates to an unlimited patenting of new breeds of animals. Fourteen thousand similar patent applications are currently pending on the office's caseload...
Leder last week defended the patent office's approval of his mouse patent, saying that such licenses are needed to give industry incentive to sponsor scientific research...
...They [officials in the patent office] chose [to give the patent] because it involved Harvard, Dupont and cancer research, and they thought it was the best way to legitimize this," Weissman says...