Plants, patents and political challenges

Followers of the changing life sciences patenting landscape will be well aware of the extended saga at the European Patent Office (EPO) regarding two cases heard together and known as Broccoli and Tomatoes. In these cases the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO decided that, while essentially biological processes of producing plants or animals (such as crossing of plants or sexual reproduction of animals) are excluded from patentability, new products derived from such processes are not excluded from patentability simply because they resulted from such an essentially biological process.