Biotechnology - a challenge to the patent system

Biotechnology inventions raise both moral and technical dilemmas. The patent system was developed to protect inventions such as the Spinning Jenny and Stevenson's Rocket. This article looks at how this long-established and slow-moving system is coping with a modern, highly sophisticated and swiftly moving field of science. It looks at specific areas of the technology - research tools and claims that reach to the products produced using those tools, genes, stem cells and bioinformatics. It concludes that the system is having to adapt, but that it will cope.