Will today's impressive global acceptance of agricultural biotechnology continue unabated? The EPO must navigate between those who see patents in this field as key to scientific progress and those who are worried about ethical and societal implications.

Last year, global biotech crop acreage reached a historic 282 million acres in 23 countries, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA). The reason for these impressive figures? Jim Greenwood, president and chief executive officer of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), said it best: "…agricultural biotechnology delivers significant and tangible benefits, all the way from farm to fork."

He is of course referring to a reduction in the environmental impact of agriculture, increased production on the same amount of acreage, improved food quality, and increased farmer incomes, among the many agri-biotech benefits.

Patents – key to this growing market. No surprise there…inventors have been filing applications for biotechnological patents for more than 100 years. Exhibit one – a novel method for producing yeast culture, patented in Finland in November 1843. Exhibit two – a patent for an improved yeast-making method granted in France to Louis Pasteur. Today, agricultural biotech patents have been responsible for modifying the physiology of plants in order to achieve such benefits as higher yields and resistance to disease and herbicides.

Do patents help or hurt? In today's more complex society, a divided opinion exists on biotechnology patents. Some see them as a sign of ongoing scientific progress; others view them with alarm as such inventions may pose risk to individuals, society and the environment. Thus, patent offices, such as the European Patent Office, now have to consider these two sides when granting – or refusing – biotechnology patents.

The solution – follow relevant European law, and then some. Agricultural biotechnology inventions, like those in any other technical field, must meet the same criteria when applying for patents. They must be new, must be applicable to industrial use, and must involve an inventive step. But in addition to these, the European Union adopted EU Directive 98/44/EC (aka the Biotech Patent Directive and incorporated to the European Patent Convention as Rules 23b-e) to differentiate between what is patentable and what is not in biotech inventions. Agricultural biotech inventions that fulfill the above main criteria are basically patentable except for plant and animal varieties and essentially biological processes for the production of plants and animals.

Agri-biotechnology has seen its share of controversial patents, the most recent being the Lubrizol Corp.'s patent application that resulted in the first European patent for a transgenic plant. Perhaps this is the reason for still-evolving laws such as that for patents for plant production.

But the fact that patent laws are working around these controversies is enough reason to celebrate. One can certainly look forward to these agri-biotech works in progress around the world: drought-tolerant biotech wheat from Australia, beta-carotene-enriched potatoes from Italy, bacterial wilt-resistant sweet bananas from Uganda, carbon dioxide-ingesting (three times more than ordinary varieties) eucalyptus trees from Taiwan, caterpillar-resistant broccoli from New Zealand…and more.