Challenges to the patenting of “essentially biological processes” in India

Commenting on the US Supreme Court’s historic decision Diamond v Chakrabarty, 447 US 303 (1980), which permitted the patenting of life forms, Justice Warren Burger said: “No one will be able to deter the scientific mind from probing into the unknown any more than Canute could command the tides”. Probing into the unknown and the possibility of patenting one’s invention is what has catalysed scientific advancement in all fields of technology.