Decades of development in plant genomics were riding on the decision, the results of which translate into more research dollars for plant scientists. The ruling means the products of their laboratories can claim as much as 20 years of monopolistic protection under US patent law. Had the case gone the other way, plant genomics research may have withered as investors halted funding because they could not protect their profits.
"This issue was decided 20-some years ago, and the impact can be measured in what has happened in plant breeding over the past couple of decades," says Jeff Kushan, a partner in the law firm of Powell Goldstein Frazer Murphy in Washington, DC, which filed an amicus brief backing plant patents on behalf of the US Biotechnology Industry Organization. The impact, he says, is that companies such as Pioneer, which engage in agricultural genomics research, have expanded classic plant-breeding practices to ...
