Sustainablepulse.com, By: Admin, 07/09/2013

On 5th July, Hon Justice Prabha Sridevi, Chair of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board of India, and Hon Shri DPS Parmar, technical member, dismissed Monsanto’s appeal against the rejection of their patent application to the Patent office for “Methods of Enhancing Stress Tolerance in plants and methods thereof.” The title of the patent was later amended to “A method of producing a transgenic plant, with increasing heat tolerance, salt tolerance or drought tolerance”.

 

The patent office refused to grant the patent as it was found that the application lacked an inventive step in view of (i) Willimsky Gerald Journal of bacteriology Vol.174, No 20, 1992, -6335, (ii) WO 90/09447and US 5470971;  (ii) Claims do not define any invention under section 2(1)(ja) of the Patents Act, 1970 as structure and function of cold shock protein was already known in cited prior art and it is obvious to person skilled in plant to make transgenic plant; (iii) It is mere application of already known cold shock protein in producing cold stress tolerant plant and tolerant to heat, salt and drought conditions, claims fall within the scope of Section 3(d) of The Patents Act, 1970. (iv)  The patent office found that it is not patentable under 3(j) as claims also include essential biological process of regeneration and selection, which includes growing of plant in specific stress condition.

 

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