240 • Impacts of Applied Genetics— Micro-Organisms, Piants, and Animais 
in protection, since the breeder can control the 
inbred, parental stocks and the same hybrid 
cannot be reproduced from hybrid seed. 
The 1970 Act, administered by the Office of 
Plant Variety Protection within the U.S. Depart- 
ment of Agriculture (USDA), parallels the patent 
statutes to a large degree. Certificates of Plant 
V'ariety Protection allow the breeder to exclude 
The Chakrabarty case _ 
In 1972, Ananda M. Chakrabarty, then a re- 
search scientist for the General Electric Co., de- 
veloped a strain of bacteria that would degrade 
four of the major components of crude oil. He 
did this by taking plasmids from several dif- 
ferent strains, each of which gave the original 
strain a natural ability to degrade one of the 
crude oil components, and putting them into a 
single strain. The new bacterium was designed 
to be placed on an oil spill to break down the oil 
into harmless products by using it for food, and 
then to disappear when the oil was gone. Be- 
cause anyone could take and reproduce the mi- 
crobe once it was used, Chakrabarty applied for 
a patent on his invention. The U.S. Patent and 
Trademark Office granted a patent on the proc- 
ess by which the bacterium was developed and 
on a combination of a carrier (such as straw) 
and the bacteria. It refused to grant patent pro- 
tection on the bacterium itself, contending that 
living organisms other than plant were not 
patentable under existing law. On appeal, the 
Court of Customs and Patent Appeals held that 
the inventor of a genetically engineered micro- 
organism whose invention otherwise met the 
legal requirements for obtaining a patent could 
not be denied a patent solely because the inven- 
tion was alive. The Supreme Court affirmed. 
The majority opinion characterized the issue 
as follows:® 
The question before us in this case is a nar- 
row one of statutory interpretation requiring us 
to construe 35 U.S.C. §101, which provides: 
^Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 100 S.Ct. 2204, 2207 (1980). 
Others from selling, offering for sale, reproduc- 
ing (sexually or asexually), importing, or export- 
ing the protected variety. In addition, others 
cannot use it to produce a hybrid or a different 
variety for sale. However, saving seed for crop 
production and for the use and reproduction of 
protected varieties for research is expressly 
permitted. The term of protection is 18 years. 
"Whoever invents or discovers any new and 
useful process, machine, manufacture, or com- 
position of matter, or any new and useful im- 
provement thereof, may obtain a patent there- 
for, subject to the conditions and requirements 
of this title.” 
Specifically, we must determine whether re- 
spondent’s micro-organism constitutes a "manu- 
facture” or "composition of matter” within the 
meaning of the statute. 
After evaluating the words of the statute, the 
policy behind the patent laws, and the legis- 
lative history of section 101 of the patent 
statutes and of the two plant pi'otection Acts, 
the Court ruled that Congress had not intended 
to distinguish between unpatentable and pat- 
entable subject matter on the basis of liv ing ver- 
sus nonliving, but on the basis of "pi’oducts of 
nature, whether living or not, and human-made 
inventions.”'* Therefore, the majority ruled, 
“[t]he patentee has produced a new bacterium 
with markedly different characteilslics from 
any found in nature and one having potential 
for significant utility. His discovery is not na- 
ture’s handiwork, hut his own; accordingly it is 
patentable subject matter under §101.”® The 
majority did not see their decision as extt'nding 
the limits of patentability beyond those set by 
Congress. 
The Court found that, in choosing such ex- 
pansive terms as "manufactun'” and "com- 
position of matter”— words that have Imumi in 
every patent statute since 1 793— ('ongress plain- 
ly intended the patent laws to have a wide 
■■Ibkl, p. 2,210. 
®lbici, p. 2,208. 
i 
