By Donald Zuhn —

In a press release
issued on Wednesday, the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) recalled the
Supreme Court's landmark decision in Diamond
v. Chakrabarty,
which was issued thirty years ago on June 16, 1980.  In Chakrabarty,
the Court determined (by a 5-4 vote) that a genetically engineered Pseudomonas bacterium capable of
breaking down multiple components of crude oil "plainly qualifies" as
patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101 (at right, Dr. Ananda Chakrabarty).  Citing the Senate and House Committee Reports that
accompanied the 1952 Patent Act, the Court explained that "Congress intended
statutory subject matter to 'include anything under the sun that is made by
man," and determined that "[Chakrabarty's] discovery is not nature's
handiwork, but his own," and therefore constituted patentable subject
matter under § 101.

In
BIO's release, BIO President and CEO Jim Greenwood that the Chakrabarty decision "was instrumental
in spurring the creation of a dynamic and flourishing biotech industry,"
adding that the decision "provided assurance to biotech companies and
their investors that emerging technologies are protected by the patent system
even if they could not have been foreseen when the system was created 200 years
earlier."  Mr. Greenwood noted
that in the thirty years that have passed since the Court decided Chakrabarty,
"the biotechnology industry in the United States has improved and saved
lives around the world through breakthrough medical therapies, increased crop
yields, and renewable fuels," and has been "a key component of the
nation’s innovation economy, supporting more than 7.5 million jobs throughout
the country and providing the United States with a global competitive advantage."

Coincidentally,
while the biotech industry celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Chakrabarty decision, Myriad Genetics
and the Directors of the University of Utah Research Foundation spent part of
the day filing their notice of appeal in the Association for Molecular Pathology v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
gene patenting case (see "Myriad
Appeals AMP v. USPTO Decision").