Patenting life

Our European patent system is self-financing, self-sufficient and almost self-legislating. It works on two, intertwined levels. It is complex, has its own courts, and perhaps, some may say, the very last thing we need is further legislative interest by a body that, until recently, has had little to do with patenting in Europe. Yet this is what the European Council and Parliament did when trying to legislate for patents and morality in 1998 via Directive 98/44/EC on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions—the Biotech Directive.