Biotechnology Patenting

471-480This article deals with the latest technology to create major intellectual property problems for courts and legislatures, viz. biotechnology. It discusses the economic principles of intellectual property in the way these apply to the decision framework for new technologies. However, it is limited to patents leaving out copyright, trademarks, trade secrets and other forms of protection where other considerations come into play. The way the courts have handled core patent issues such as novelty, non-obviousness and utility in the biotechnology field is reviewed in order to explore more deeply the application of the economic principles of intellectual property, viz. incentive and access principles. It discuses the various issues in biotechnology patenting as an illustration of an economic approach to intellectual property law not limited to threshold issues