Running head: REQUIREMENTS OF A PATENT 1
REQUIREMENTS OF A PATENT 3
A patent denotes a form of intellectual property that excludes others from making use or benefiting from it. However, this limitation is usually for a number of years, and usually exchanged for publishing an enabling public disclosure of invention (Eisenberg, 2008). For a patent to be recognized, it has to be statutory, which means it must be eligible. The invention is required to be new for it to be patentable. This means that any new idea, process, or device should not be disclosed to the public prior to being patentable. Besides, the invention should be useful, and should be used to accomplish a specific purpose. Besides, it should satisfy the requirement of not being obvious, which means that it should be totally new and not an improvement over a previous invention.
Companies should not be given the right to patent life forms or any other form of genetic materials because they are naturally occurring. However, the methods and ways used to isolate these genes are patentable because they can only be devised through human intelligence, unlike the genes that occur naturally. It does not matter whether the life form is sentient or non-sentient because both have life and are naturally occurring. Therefore, they cannot be attributed to be a property to any individual (Chernoff, 2008).
There is no one, including the government, has the right to end life. There is no specific law that defines life as a property or where life is beyond a person’s or business appropriation (Huber, 2018). However, a being that has life can be treated as a property to a person, but they do not have a right to own the life of the particular being. That is a person can only own the being and not the life in it.
Chernoff, Vilhauer, McClung & Stenzel, LLP. (2008). Patent law you can use, part II. Findlaw. Retrieved from http://corporate.findlaw.com/litigation-disputes/patent-law-you-can-use-part-2.html
Eisenberg. (2008). Patent law you can use, part I. Findlaw. Retrieved from http://corporate.findlaw.com/intellectual-property/patent-law-you-can-use-part-1.html
Huber, P. (2018, Autumn). Who owns the code of life? City Journal. [Web version.] Retrieved from https://www.city-journal.org/html/who-owns-code-life-13601.html