In Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303 (1980), the U.S. Supreme Court extended patent protection to new forms of life. The Court relied on the legislative history, noting that the drafters of 35 U.S.C. § 101 intended “to 'include anything under the sun that is made by man.'” Id. at 309 (quoting S. REP. NO. 1979, 82d Cong., 2d Sess. 5 (1952); and H.R. REP. NO. 1923, 82d Cong., 2d Sess. 6 (1952)).
Patents are granted today for genetic material, though the ACLU challenged this practice with a lawsuit in 2009.
See also
United States Supreme Court Cases Patent Law
- Snippet from Wikipedia: Diamond v. Chakrabarty
Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303 (1980), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with whether living organisms can be patented. Writing for a five-justice majority, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger held that human-made bacteria could be patented under the patent laws of the United States because such an invention constituted a "manufacture" or "composition of matter". Justice William J. Brennan Jr., along with Justices Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, and Lewis F. Powell Jr., dissented from the Court's ruling, arguing that because Congress had not expressly authorized the patenting of biological organisms, the Court should not extend patent law to cover them.
In the decades since the Court's ruling, the case has been recognized as a landmark case for U.S. patent law, with industry and legal commentators identifying it as a turning point for the biotechnology industry.