But U.S. Bars Coverage for New Human Characteristics : Animal Life Forms May Be Patented

A new government policy will allow inventors to patent new animal life forms created through gene splicing but specifically bars the patenting of new human characteristics, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced Friday.

The patent office “will consider applications on new types of animals produced by human intervention,” Oscar Mastin, a patent office spokesman, said.

New breeds of animals produced by traditional breeding methods will still be ineligible for patents, he said.

And the office “will not consider an application involving a human being,” said Mastin, confirming a report in the New York Times.

Could Protect Human Forms

Another patent official, however, said the policy could lead eventually to commercial protection of new human life forms.

“The decision says higher life forms will be considered and it could be extrapolated to human beings,” Charles E. Van Horn, director of organic chemistry and biotechnology in the U.S. Patent Office, told the New York Times, which reported the new policy in Friday’s editions.

Under the policy adopted by the Commerce Department’s Patent and Trademark Office and scheduled to be published Tuesday, patents of animals with new traits produced through new reproductive technologies, including genetic engineering, will be allowed.

The policy would make the United States the first country to patent animals.

Scientists and farming experts say the technology has important economic consequences for the biotechnology industry and agriculture.

It could produce, for example, cows that give more milk or pigs that have less fat. It often takes years to produce commercial traits using natural, selective breeding, the scientists say.

A coalition of animal welfare and public policy groups led by the Humane Society of the United States and the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington was formed last week to block implementation of the policy.

Jeremy Rifkin, president of the foundation, said the coalition filed a petition Friday asking the patent office to rescind the policy.

“It’s an arbitrary and capricious agency action because the statutes of the patent law were never meant to cover animal life,” he said.