SEVEN years of bitter squabbling and noisy protest finally came to an end last week when the European Parliament killed off the controversial directive on biotechnology patents. After heavy lobbying from groups opposed to the patenting of animals, plants and human genes, it voted by 240 votes to 188 to abandon the directive.
Pressure groups morally opposed to the idea that life can be patented were celebrating the outcome last week. This is the first directive the European Parliament has defeated using the extra powers it was given by the Maastricht Treaty. The biotechnology industry was equally relieved by the outcome, even though the directive was intended to help it to develop new products. Biotechnology companies were unhappy with fudged wording added in a last-ditch attempt to save the directive from the scrap heap.
The future of the directive had been in doubt since last May, when the European Parliament rejected a draft agreed by both the Council of Ministers and the European Commission. A revised version designed to satisfy the MEPs was unveiled in January, but the changes did not go far enough for them.
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The directive would have ironed out differences between national patent rules so that a patent awarded in one member country would be accepted in the others. Companies say they are not particularly worried by its death, however, because they can apply for Europe-wide protection through the European Patent Office in Munich. The EPO follows the rules of the 1978 European Patent Convention.
鈥淚t鈥檚 business as usual and, if anything, we鈥檙e slightly relieved,鈥� says Nick Scott-Ram, the head of the BioIndustry Association鈥檚 intellectual property committee. 鈥淚 think it would have put us at a competitive disadvantage against the US if the directive had been passed.鈥� The final draft of the directive contained ambiguities that left some points of ethics open to more than one interpretation. This would have left patents vulnerable to challenge, holding up commercial development.
The woolliest compromise, he says, was the attempt to draw a moral distinction between human genes in the body 鈥� which were deemed unpatentable and synthetic versions of those genes produced in the laboratory 鈥� which the 鈥� directive suggested could be patented.
Pressure groups opposed to patents on living things claimed a major victory. 鈥淭he directive is dead, and if [the European Commission] wants to draft a new one, it must start with a blank piece of paper,鈥� says Robin Jenkins of the Genetics Forum.
Anna Brindley of Greenpeace hailed the vote as 鈥渁 moral victory for nature, and a severe blow to the genetic engineering industry鈥�. Brindley and Jenkins both expect the ruling to put extra pressure on the EPO to consider potentially controversial patents more carefully.
Brindley says that Greenpeace will continue to monitor the EPO鈥檚 decisions. Recently, the patent office conceded that it had awarded a biotechnology patent that contravened the European Patent Convention (see This Week, 4 March).
Ren茅e Vellv茅 of Genetic Resources Action International, a lobby group on biodiversity issues, described the result as a victory for conscience over capital. 鈥淓urope has sent a very strong message to the rest of the world that it鈥檚 inadmissible and immoral to patent life forms,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a signal saying: do not push forward too quickly.鈥�