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 "Dolly's genetic identity to her donor parent renders her
unpatentable," Judge Timothy Dyk wrote Thursday for the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C.
Pilar Ossorio, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of
Wisconsin Law School, called the decision a victory for people who
thought cloning animals was morally wrong.
"This ruling is taking away an incentive for research organizations
to pursue more research into cloning, at least on the margins," she
said.
Scientists Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell of the Roslin Institute of
Edinburgh, Scotland, generated international headlines and intense
ethical debates in 1996 when they created Dolly the Sheep, the first
mammal to be cloned from an adult cell.
 Dolly, named after country singer Dolly Parton, was euthanized six
years later after she was diagnosed with a progressive lung disease.
The institute, which owns a patent to a method of cloning called
somatic cell nuclear transfer, applied for a patent over the clones
themselves but was rejected by a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
examiner in 2008.
In February 2013, the USPTO affirmed the examiner's decision, saying
the clones did not possess "markedly different characteristics than
any found in nature."
In affirming the USPTO, the Federal Circuit said that nature,
natural phenomena and abstract ideas were not eligible for patent
protection.
Salvatore Arrigo, a lawyer for Roslin, said he was disappointed with
the ruling.
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"There's no doubt in anyone's mind that Dolly is man-made," he said.
Roslin had argued that its clones were distinguishable from their
donor mammals, in part because environmental factors could make
their shape, size, color and behaviors different than their donors.
The Federal Circuit disagreed, noting that Roslin itself had said
that such differences were produced "quite independently of any
effort of the patentee."
"There is nothing in the claims...that suggests that the clones are
distinct in any relevant way from the donor animals of which they
are copies," Dyk wrote.
The USPTO declined to comment.
The case is In re Roslin Institute (Edinburgh), U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Federal Circuit, No. 1407.
(Reporting by Bernard Vaughan; Editing by Ted Botha and Ken Wills)
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