Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
US Department of Health and Human Services. Tumor suppressor
gene, p471NG3. US Patent 8,067,563, issued March 2011.
Albany Medical College. Isolated antibodies against biologically
active leptin-related peptides. US Patent 8,067,545, issued December
2011.
Cargill Inc. Method, apparatus and system for quantifying GM
material in a sample. US Patent 8,150,631, issued April 2012.
Trustees of Dartmouth College. Synthesis and biological activities
of new tricyclic-bis-enones (TBEs). US Patent 8,067,394, issued May
2010.
Kwang-Hua Development Investment Ltd. Method and composi-
tion for genetically modifying non-human cells and animals. US
Patent 8,148,143, issued April 2012.
The European Patent Office (EPO) is almost as large as the USPTO
and the websites of both make for fascinating reading for those
who know little about the arcane world of intellectual property (see
http://www.uspto.gov/index.jsp and http://www.epo.org/) .
The three qualification criteria - utility, novelty and non-obviousness -
must be demonstrated in words (and, where appropriate, images) in any
patent claim filed with a national patent office . 5 Patent offices have elab-
orate and highly prescriptive procedures that any firm or person filing a
patent must abide by. For instance, the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure,
issued by USPTO (and now in its eighth edition), is a multivolume docu-
ment of forbidding technical detail. The discourse of inventors (commercial
laboratory and field scientists in the case of biotech firms) is thereby ren-
dered obligatorily in the legal-procedural language of patent law. The result
is a highly formalised representation that describes and explains a process,
design or artefact that is claimed to be useful, novel and the result of an
inventive step. I explain this in Box 5.2 . However, before you read the box,
complete the study task below to see if you can identify the senses in which
patents 're-present'.
Study Task: As Box 5.1 shows, all patents are filed by a named inventor
(or agent thereof), have a title, and comprise a detailed description of the
process or thing over which a property right is being claimed. In light of this,
what exactly is 're-presented' in the pages of a patent claim? Once you've
attempted to answer this question, read Box 5.2.
Once a patent claim is submitted, patent officials must then check not
only whether it meets the stipulated criteria, but also whether it infringes
 
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