In accordance with the concept of the book and the assigned scope of the contribution, this chapter describes the European law with respect to the patent-eligibility of isolated DNA sequences. This chapter will further include a brief comparison with recent developments from the US and Australia. It will, however, not focus on the important debates regarding the patent-eligibility of other biological material, diagnostic methods patents (as data aggregators) or abstract ideas which will be addressed by other contributions. Moreover, the analysis will merely concentrate on patent-eligibility. Other patentability requirement will only be briefly touched upon in the discussion part.

The paper starts out in section 1.5.2 by discussing the patent-eligibility of isolated human DNA sequences on the European national level and under the Biotechnology Directive. Then the patent-eligibility of isolated human DNA sequences at the EPO will be analyzed in section 1.5.3. This will provide the basis for the final section 1.5.4, which provides a brief discussion and some concluding remarks on the current European approaches and about what effect might the recent U.S. and Australian developments might have on European policy debates and legislation.