Dolly the Sheep’s Clones Deemed Unpatentable by U.S. Court

May 9, 2014

(Bloomberg Businessweek) – The Scottish scientists famous for concocting “Dolly” the sheep lost a bid to get U.S. patent protection for the cloned animal, as a court said their creations are just genetic copies of naturally occurring beings. The Roslin Institute in Edinburgh had argued that Dolly, which was created in 1996, and any other clones of live animals are eligible to be patented because they are the “product of human ingenuity.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington today disagreed. The process to create the clone, covered by at least one other patent, wasn’t at issue in the case.