Biotechnology (Hansard, 31 October 2002)

§ Dr. Gibson
To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what steps her Department is taking to ensure that stringent criteria for patenting biotechnology inventions are applied at the European patent office. [77872]

§ Miss Melanie Johnson
The criteria for patenting in this field are laid down in EU Directive 98/44/EC on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions. The UK was successful in achieving incorporation of these criteria into the implementing regulations of the European Patent Convention, which governs the work of the European Patent Office (EPO), at the end of 2000.
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§ Dr. Gibson
To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what role her Department is playing in international collaboration aimed at harmonising practice on the patenting of biotechnology inventions. [77873]

§ Miss Melanie Johnson
The G7 countries have agreed to work together on the issues surrounding the patentability of biotechnological inventions. UK guidelines summarising the Patent Office's current practice based on the existing law and legal precedents from the UKcourts and the European Patent Office (EPO) will be provided to the G7 as a basis for further discussion. Staff in the UK Patent Office have also established and maintained regular contacts with their opposite numbers in the EPO to exchange information about practice in this field. Similar contacts exist with the Swedish, Austrian, Japanese, Chinese and Australian Patent Offices. The Patent Office takes due account of decisions which emerge from the EPO in making its own decisions.

§ Dr. Gibson
To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what guidelines she has issued on the benchmarks used for assessing the patentability of biotechnology inventions; and what implications these guidelines have for future patenting of DNA sequences identified by data-mining techniques. [77874]

§ Miss Melanie Johnson
The Patent Office published the examination guidelines used by patent examiners for assessing the patentability of biotechnological inventions in October. The guidelines are a summary of the Office's current practice based on the existing law and legal precedents from the UK courts and the European Patent Office. They are available from the Patent Office website at http://www.patent.gov.uk
Inventions arising from data-mining have to satisfy the usual patentability requirements, including inventive steps. The guidelines state that the 'use of mining to identify a polynucleotide or a polypeptide homologous to a polynucleotide or polypeptide, having a known function or activity, will not normally involve and inventive step'.