Opinion on ethical questions arising from the Commission proposal for a Council directive on legal protection for biotechnological inventions.

Through the patent, the inventor shared the knowledge of his invention with the rest of society (see the report to the French National Assembly for the debate on the Act of 7 January 1791, one of the first to establish patent protection of inventions). [...] The first of these to be concluded was the Strasbourg Convention on the Unification of Certain Points of Substantive Law on Patents of Invention, signed by the Member States of the Council of Europe in 1963. [...] The Group welcomes the fact that, during discussion on the Directive in question, the Community institutions, particularly Parliament, have had the opportunity to express their concern about the ethics of advances in biology and genetics. [...] The Group is of the opinion that, in order not to hinder its development, the principle of the patentability of inventions relating to living matter must be upheld wherever ethically possible. [...] The group shares the ethical considerations behind the provisions added as reaction to the debate in the european Parliament.