No, on the contrary. The patent directive for biotechnological inventions is a provision that, once implemented also at the national levels, enables these inventions to follow the same rules of patentability as other products. They do not need more protection than other inventions, just the same rules and the same certainties.

This means that the directive will not make it easier to patent biotech products than other products. It just removes the systematic disadvantage that inventors seeking to patent biotechnology products used to face in Europe, by contrast with those elsewhere, especially in the USA.

Far from widening the range of patent law for biotech products the new directive clarifies the situation, including the limits on patentability. In doing so, it will help to make evident why some of the perceived problem areas are not in fact problems at all. The directive states that body organs, nor human beings, nor animal or plant varieties can be patented.

Furthermore, in the directive it becomes clear that patents related to biological material of human origin cannot be extended to its presence in humans. In the case of the relaxin mentioned above this means: the code can be patented, and consequently the relaxin made artificially using this code, but never the relaxin in the bodies of pregnant women (' in their natural state' )!