History
The United States has been patenting chemical compositions based upon human products for over 100 years. The first patent for a human product was granted on March 20, 1906 for a purified form of adrenaline. It was challenged and upheld in Parke-Davis v. Mulford Judge Hand argued that natural substances when they are purified are more useful than the original natural substances.
In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Diamond v. Chakrabarty, upheld the first patent on a newly created living organism, a bacterium for digesting crude oil in oil spills. The patent examiner for the United States Patent and Trademark Office had rejected the patent of a living organism, but Chakrabarty appealed. As a rule, raw natural material is generally rejected for patent approval by the USPTO. The Court ruled that as long as the organism is truly "man-made," such as through genetic engineering, then it is patentable. Because the DNA of Chakrabarty's organism was modified, it was patentable.
Read more about this topic: Gene Patent
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