The "Biopatent Monitoring Committee"

The European Directive on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions 98/44/EC has been transformed into national law on 10 June 2005. The Austrian Parliament has connected the establishment of a special monitoring committee to this transformation. This committee ("Biopatent Monitoring Committee") had the task to monitor the impact of this transformation into Austrian law on:

• "human rights, animals, plants and ecological systems"
• "monitoring the national granting and decision practice"
• "consumer protection, agriculture and developing countries" whether inventions contrary to human rights and morality have been granted, and
• "research and economy, especially on SMEs".

The Committee consists of a large variety of representatives of interested circles (e.g. the Chambers of Patent Attorneys, of Attorneys-at-Law, of Commerce, of Industry, the Ministries of Economy, of Health and of Science, Chamber of Employees, the Union, and the Society for Consumer Information ...).

Even though the Committee was so diverse in its composition it has delivered its fist report to the Austrian parliament in June 2006. The report contained an analysis of the Examination Guidelines of the Austrian Patent Office for biotechnological inventions. These Guidelines were held to be 100–% in conformity with the EU Directive. Due to the short monitoring time, no significant changes proven by hard facts could be observed, however, the report showed some positive developments in the economic field. In the biotech sector, investments and number of employees have risen and confidence was expressed by the SMEs in this field, especially because of the expectation of legal certainty for their patents. It was also positively observed that the transformation of university research into commercial projects was significantly improved. On the other hand, negative consequences, which had often been worried about in the past, were not observed by the committee, not even with respect to publication activity of university scientists also involved in patenting.

The report of the Austrian Biopatent Monitoring Committee is available online.

Dr. Daniel Alge, patent attorney