Revitalizing Biotechnological Advancement in the United States: Patent Eligibility Reform to Promote Innovation While Preserving Morality

Patent protection has long been recognized as a key part of promoting innovation; however, current patent eligibility law in the United States often produces the exact opposite result. While the basic framework for patent eligibility is provided by the Patent Act, the United States Supreme Court has crafted several significant exceptions to patent eligibility—laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas. These judicial exceptions have created a crisis in patent law and impeded biotechnological innovation, as they are too vague to be properly confined and carry tests that are too ambiguous for predictable application. To promote and retain world leadership in biotechnological innovation, the United States legislature must act promptly in reforming patent eligibility law with a Bill that will eradicate this landscape of uncertainty and, in turn, revitalize biotechnological innovation while preserving morality in patent law. This Note proposes reform by the United States legislature to: (1) amend Section 101 of the Patent Act to abrogate the judicial exceptions; (2) utilize detailed specialized statutory provisions to adequately prevent the over-patenting of immoral biotechnologies; (3) direct courts to handle outlying moral contentions to patent protection via the existing statutory framework; and (4) codify and broaden the judicial research exemption to patent infringement. This proposal is supported by the Note’s novel contribution of determining the “critical tradeoff” of the competing interests in patenting biotechnology—incentivizing innovation and preserving morality. This Note balances the competing interests to reach the critical tradeoff by challenging common arguments, identifying legal safeguards outside of patent eligibility law that can compensate for its deficiencies, and enumerating the critical action for each distinct concern.