6. Biotechnological Patents
28. A total of 17 submissions commented on this topic. Submissions were equally divided over whether patent legislation should exclude plants or animals from patentability. Of those against the patenting of plants and animals, the majority preferred only the exclusion of plants from patentability.
29. Patent owners were in favour of allowing at least some types of biotechnological inventions to be patentable. These responses ranged from allowing all types of biotechnological inventions to be patentable to allowing only micro-organisms, non-biological processes and microbiological processes to be patented (the minimum allowed for by the TRIPS Agreement).
30. Submissions from environmental and humanitarian groups and like-minded individuals were against any form of patent protection for plants and animals, especially food crops and indigenous flora and fauna, as well as any protection for biotechnological inventions, especially those involving genetic resources and in particular genetic resources of humans, food crops and farmed animals.
31. Only the NZIPA and Baldwin Shelston Waters submissions answered the question on whether New Zealand's patent legislation should contain an explicit requirement that an invention be "useful" before it could be granted a patent. Both these submissions answered the question in the affirmative.
32. Most patent owners commented that they were in favour of plant breeders being able to obtain dual protection under the both Act and the Plant Variety Rights Act 1987 (the "PVR Act") for new plant varieties. Four of these submissions also noted that if only one form of protection was to be available to plant breeders, the preferred form of protection should be under the PVR Act. The submission from the Crop & Food Research Institute suggested that dual protection should be available for plants but not for the same cultivar, whilst Auckland Uniservices Ltd suggested that plants produced by asexual reproduction should be protected under the Act and plants produced by sexual reproduction should be protected under the PVR Act.
33. The Nursery & Garden Industry Association of New Zealand commented that protection for new plant varieties should only be granted under the PVR Act. Lewis (supported by Bio-Gro New Zealand) recommended against the extension of patents into the area of plant variety rights.
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