Roughly twenty years ago, newspaper headlines were packed with stories about Dolly the sheep — the first cloned mammal. More recently, in 2014, In re Roslin[iii] finally laid the patent claims related to Dolly to rest. Although Roslin speaks specifically to cloning technologies, the saga highlights an essential problem in the current judicial approach to patenting life science inventions. We will look first at the history of Roslin and then at its implications for patent law.
