Patenting of New Life forms - A Critical Review

A patent is a form of immaterial property, or as it is now called, an Intellectual Property, that grants its owners exclusive control over the production and sale of an invention. The invention can be either a product or a process that provides a new substitute of doing something, or offers a new technical solution to a problem. The term "patent" has also been recently used in connection with the new life forms. Such a patent bestows on patent holder the recognized ownership of the new life forms. This category of patents besides having a potential to destroy biodiversity and livelihoods of indigenous companies, also encourages biopiracy. Besides this, there are a number of issues that arise immediately on the legality, economic feasibility, morality and safety of this concept. The present article is written with the objective to provide an in depth insight into all these issues.