In 1985, its inventors — Timothy Steward and Philip Leder of Harvard University — applied for a European patent entitled 'Method for producing transgenic animals'. The patent was granted in May 1992 for non-human mammalian animals for the eleven member states of the European Patent Organisation. In 1992 and 1993, seventeen oppositions against the patent were filed, which led to the decision in November 2001 to confine the patent to transgenic rodents. The EPO limited the patent to rodents because it felt that it was impossible to assume that the balance between benefit to society and suffering to the mouse could be automatically extended to all types of animal.
The appeals lodged in March 2003 by six of the original opponents, including the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, claimed that the patent did not meet the requirements of novelty and inventive step, and was contrary to public order and morality. The Technical Board of Appeal, the final judicial body of the EPO, heard the appeals and decided to restrict the patent further to 'transgenic mice'. The EPO has yet to publish the full reasons for the decision, which could have a significant effect on other patents and patent applications involving animals.
