Some opponents say it is a moral affront to patent living things or parts of living things.
Those opposed to cloning and to patenting living things say the patent is a further sign that human life is being turned into a commodity.
Though Ms. Patel's group plays a relatively small part in the process -- the company has staff in 34 countries -- International Flavor's literature boasts heavily of the patented "Living Flower" technology.
Other times, bogus patents live on in limbo, unchallenged and unasserted, impressing no one except, perhaps, investors who hope for a fat portfolio of intellectual property.
Other bogus patents live on in limbo, unchallenged and unasserted, impressing no one except, perhaps, investors who hope for a fat portfolio of intellectual property.
Science fiction continues to flourish in short form offerings, and the winner of the award for best story was Ken Liu, born in China and now a patent lawyer living in Massachusetts, whose "Mono no Aware" appeared in the collection "The Future is Japanese".
The United States has been more liberal than most other countries in granting patents on living things, ever since a Supreme Court decision in 1980 that allowed the patenting of a microbe genetically engineered to consume oil spills.
Indeed, it is now best known, for better or worse, for applying biotechnology to seed production, winning a string of the sort of patents on living organisms that became legal in America only after a Supreme Court decision in 1980.
It is one of two cases before the Supreme Court related to the patenting of living organisms, a practice that has helped give rise to the biotechnology industry but which critics have long considered immoral.
