"This is a tremendous victory not just for the beagle dogs but for the 499 other animals who have been patented in the U.S.," said AAVS President Sue Leary, "The University took the only morally defensible action it could in the face of our challenge. It got the message that animals are not machines, articles of manufacture, or inventors' compositions of matter."
The patent's claims covered, among other things, "a canine model [of fungal lung infection]," and the various methods used to induce a fatal lung infection in the beagle dogs. The patent also indicated applying the methods to pigs, sheep, monkeys, or chimpanzees and, like many other patents on animals, appeared to be exclusively licensed to a private company.
"This decision, hopefully, is a first step to rescinding all patents on animals," says Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of CTA. "It is long past time for our government to recognize that animals are not patentable machines."
The AAVS/PatentWatch challenge represented the first time public interest organizations had requested the reexamination of a patent on an animal. New rules under which this reexamination was granted will permit AAVS and PatentWatch to appeal other similar cases all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. Since the Patent and Trademark Office first issued a patent on an animal in 1987, it
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Contact: Crystal Miller-Spiegel
cspiegel@aavs.org
916-371-9872
American Anti-Vivisection Society
27-May-2004