Canada court mulls patenting GM animals

Mice have been modified to contract cancer more easily

Canada's Supreme Court is hearing arguments on Tuesday about whether scientists should be allowed to patent the genetically modified animals they create.

The case centres on the Oncomouse, developed by Harvard scientists to be especially susceptible to cancer, and therefore valuable to research.

If this is patentable, then they are all patentable

Clayton Ruby, animal rights representative

Environmentalists and many of the country's churches argue that allowing a patent on the mouse would be unethical, and result in corporations being able to effectively own the basic building blocks of life.

But Harvard's lawyers say granting a patent on genetically modified life provides a valuable incentive for scientists, and helps them turn discoveries in the laboratory into cures for diseases.

Invention or not?

The United States and Europe allowed patents on the mouse some years ago, and some say if Canada does not, the country will be left behind in the competitive world of scientific research.

But opponents say this process may not end with the mouse.

"It is a hugely important case," said Clayton Ruby, a lawyer representing three animal-rights groups intervening in the case.

Opponents feel higher life forms should not be patented

"We now have the capacity to add human genes to animals and create new forms of life... If this is patentable, then they are all patentable," Mr Ruby - one of Canada's most prominent lawyers - told the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper.

The case has wound its way though Canada's courts since the country's patent commissioner and a lower court agreed in 1998 that, under the country's patent law, passed in 1869, the mouse did not qualify as an "invention".

Two years later, however, the appeals court overturned those decisions and ruled that a patent should be granted - prompting the commissioner to send the case to the Supreme Court.

The patent application also includes the process by which the cancer-causing gene is implanted, and is not restricted to just mice.

European controversy

The Oncomouse patent granted by the European Patent Office in 1992 has also been controversial.

It was challenged last year by a range of animal-rights groups, environmentalists and churches. The patent was then revised to cover only mice with the cancer gene.

Canada's Supreme Court is expected to make a ruling in a few months.

If allowed, it would be the first time a patent had been granted in Canada on a multi-celled life form, setting an important precedent.

But the ruling would not apply to human beings.