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"Natural" Clones Are Ineligible for Patent Protection – Dorsey & Whitney

SUMMARY. Last week, in In re Roslin Institute (Edinburgh), the Federal Circuit affirmed the rejection by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) of product claims covering cloned mammals. This case relates to Dolly, commonly known as the "world’s most famous sheep." Dolly was the first mammal to be successfully cloned from a differentiated (i.e., adult) somatic cell through the process of somatic cell nuclear transfer, where her genetic material was copied from the adult animal from which she was cloned. Dolly was cloned by Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell, and others at the Roslin Institute of the University of Edinburgh (Roslin).

Wilmut and Campbell obtained a patent on the somatic cell nuclear transfer method of cloning mammals (U.S. Patent No. 7,514,258). The claims at issue, which were rejected by the USPTO, were in a separate application assigned to Roslin that sought to cover the clones themselves (U.S. Patent Application No. 09/224,233).

Read the full article here. https://clients.dorsey.com/rs/vm.ashx?ct=24F76B1ED1EA0AEDC1D089A5D52B931ADFBE7BB3D38714DD4CF371647BF8D90DDD78034

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