The fundamental importance of morality to the patenting of animals under the European patent convention
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The main focus of this study is the first European patent to be granted by the EPO for an animal, a transgenic mouse, the Harvard Oncomouse. The Oncomouse case is a landmark case in animal patenting in Europe and also in respect of establishing the importance of Article 53 (a) EPC. Prosecution of the European patent application for the Oncomouse, from refusal, to grant and into opposition proceedings is reviewed. Its prosecution for the Oncomouse, from refusal, to grant and into opposition proceedings is reviewed. Its prosecution before the EPO is compared to prosecution of the application before the US and Canadian Patent Offices. The range of arguments put forward based on the grounds that the patent offends against Article 53 (a) during the examination; appeal and opposition proceedings are analysed. The thesis is critical of the handling of the Oncomouse case by the EPO particularly the effectiveness of the Oral proceedings before the Opposition Division and the EPO’s assessment of the objections raised under Article 53 (a). It is acknowledged that morality issues are not easily addressed but the EPO has a duty to treat Article 53 (a) with the due respect it deserves and to provide an adequate system for doing so. It proposes changes to the structure of the EPO to remedy this failure. The Oncomouse case is still awaiting a final decision by the EPO 16 years after the filing of the application. This will not be available for some time yet, as the pending decision of the Opposition Division will almost certainly be appealed. In addition it is unlikely that the matter will rest there. If the patent is challenged directly in the national courts of some EPC Contracting States and if these States differ in their interpretation of the morality exception, (which in view of the differences in the religious, political and animal welfare positions adopted by certain by the EPC Contracting States they undoubtedly would) this could result in the undermining of the authority of the EPC as a means of harmonising patent protection in Europe.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.021 | 0.040 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.040 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.019 | 0.012 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.011 | 0.015 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".