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The number of process patent applications concerning farm animal breeding is growing rapidly. Patent law is general in form and is seldom adapted to specific areas of innovation. It was initially created for the purpose of granting exclusive rights to technical inventions, and it was taken for granted that higher animals, food production and pharmaceuticals were too important for mankind to be included under exclusive private rights. Today, with patent law increasingly used in the animal sector, the question arises: how will the law apply to this particular field of innovation? The degree of legal uncertainty is particularly high because it is not clear how the courts of various countries will apply the general law to this particular field. Patent law has the potential to alter the existing legal conditions for competition and investments in the field of animal breeding, and thus merits greater attention among policy-makers, animal breeders and farmers.
