After seven years of debate, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has denied a scientist a patent for a genetic chimera that is part human and part animal. The ruling was a victory for the scientist who was trying to create legal precedent against the creation of human-animal chimeras but it also raises serious questions about using the Patent office to govern emerging genetic technologies.

A design for creatures that are half man, half animal has raised fundamental questions about what it means to be human. Two critics of biotechnology want the U.S. Patent Office to answer them.

Companies doing genomic research, like Redwood City's Maxygen, have a problem. To make money, the companies feel they need to control the rights to the DNA sequences they uncover. But patenting these sequences is ethically and legally tricky.
So, Maxygen's scientists and lawyers are proposing a downright odd solution to this pickle: Encode the DNA sequences as MP3s or other music files and then copyright these genetic "tunes."

The University of Missouri has received a patent that some lawyers say could cover human cloning, potentially violating a longstanding taboo against the patenting of humans.

A patent watchdog group has discovered that the University of Missouri holds a U.S. patent on human reproductive cloning and, potentially, clones.

Jeremy Rifkin argues that recent cloning innovations and patents have crossed an ethical line by permitting a company to own a human being in "the form of intellectual property, in the gestational stages between conception and birth."