Bioethics Institute Ghent, Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium.
Consultant Patent Attorney, Ghent, Belgium.
Reprod Biomed Online. 2014 Feb;28(2):146-50. doi: 10.1016/j.rbmo.2013.09.018. Epub 2013 Sep 28.
European Patent No. 2430454 of Stanford University is open to opposition before the European Patent Office if such opposition is filed by 23 October 2013. This is the European equivalent of the US Patent that raised such controversy in this journal in August 2013 as being a patent on time. The European Patent, which is directed to a method of selecting embryos for implantation using the results of time-lapse microscopy, should, in the present authors' opinion, be revoked as being directed to a method of medical diagnosis, which is unpatentable under European patent law. The only party currently opposing Stanford's patent is a competitor, Unisense FertiliTech A/S which is itself seeking to patent similar methods in Europe; the objection that Stanford has patented a method of diagnosis has not been raised by Unisense FertiliTech. We submit that Stanford's patent should be opposed to safeguard competition and to protect the freedom to operate of clinicians. In this paper we explain how Stanford's patent should fail under European law.
斯坦福大学的欧洲专利第 2430454 号在欧洲专利局受理反对意见，如果此类反对意见在 2013 年 10 月 23 日之前提交。这是与该杂志 2013 年 8 月引起争议的美国专利相对应的欧洲专利，该专利被认为是一项关于时间的专利。该欧洲专利涉及一种使用延时显微镜结果选择胚胎进行植入的方法，本作者认为，该专利应被撤销，因为它涉及一种医疗诊断方法，根据欧洲专利法，该方法不可授予专利。目前唯一反对斯坦福专利的是竞争对手 Unisense FertiliTech A/S，该公司本身也试图在欧洲获得类似方法的专利；Unisense FertiliTech 并没有提出斯坦福已经对一种诊断方法授予专利的异议。我们认为，应该反对斯坦福的专利以维护竞争并保护临床医生的经营自由。在本文中，我们将解释斯坦福的专利根据欧洲法律应如何失效。
