One reason why the decision has caused a stir is the disconnect it causes between certain EU policies: “The decision is strange because the EU Commission allows us to do innovative research — and indeed funds such research — on established ESC lines, but as a result of this decision much of this work will now not be valorizable,” says Catherine Verfaille, Director of the Stem Cell Institute at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.

EU legislation prevents the patenting of inventions that are considered to be contrary to public policy or morality; in particular, the patenting of human embryos for industrial or commercial purposes is banned. The environmental activist group Greenpeace challenged the validity of a German patent (DE 197 56 864), assigned to Oliver Brüstle of the University of Bonn, Germany, on these grounds. The patent describes isolated and purified neural precursor cells, processes for their production from ESCs and their use for the treatment of neural defects. The case was referred to the CJEU to provide a definition of a human embryo. The CJEU decided that an embryo encompasses a fertilized human ovum or a non-fertilized human ovum into which the nucleus from a mature human cell had been placed or whose development had been stimulated by parthenogenesis, because these are all capable of commencing the process of development into a human being.

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