Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60612-7344 USA.
FEMS Microbiol Lett. 2020 Jul 1;367(13). doi: 10.1093/femsle/fnaa091.
Patents for microbiology and biotechnology are generally for a process (for example DNA cloning; and polymerase chain reaction, PCR) and not for the microbe itself. The patent for oil degrading bacteria was different in that it covered the modified microbial cell itself, a Pseudomonas strain with laboratory-assembled plasmids that encoded the bacterial degradation of multiple components of crude oil. It was first applied for in 1972, initially refused by the patent office on the basis that it was a living organism, and then eight years later in June 1980 allowed by the US Supreme Court ruling that this did not matter and the only issue was whether it was a novel manufactured product.
微生物学和生物技术专利通常是针对一个过程（例如 DNA 克隆；聚合酶链式反应，PCR），而不是针对微生物本身。降解石油的细菌专利则有所不同，它涵盖了经过修饰的微生物细胞本身，即一种带有实验室组装质粒的假单胞菌菌株，这些质粒编码了细菌对原油多种成分的降解。它于 1972 年首次申请，最初被专利局拒绝，理由是它是一种活体生物，然后在 8 年后的 1980 年，美国最高法院裁定这并不重要，唯一的问题是它是否是一种新颖的制造产品。
