http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...-into-crisis-by-stem-cell-ruling-2372562.html This thread is not about the morality of the research, it's about the European Court of Justice and its jurisdiction over member states. LetÂ’s break this down; the EU has now banned not the research, but the ability to patent a compound, which has been derived from a human embryo. How does the European Court of Justice have the ability to do that? I can imagine that they would be able to ban sales in the EU, but to ban any patents? What has it got to do with the EU if a country has a different value set develop products and sells them outside the EU?
There is a EU-wide patent system so the EU legal system would apply to it. That aspect in itself makes sense. I gather that there are national patient systems in some countries (UK included) and I've no idea how this ruling impacts them, if at all. They're probably not of much interest in this kind of field though. I wouldn't think there is anything stopping someone in Europe patenting something in another jurisdiction and going on to market the product there. I suspect they could even market the product in the EU too, though there may be the risk of being copied here (though the copy couldn't be marketed outside the EU?). It probably gets all very complicated in the kind of situation and only the lawyers get anything out of it.
I'm sure that if it depended on the European Commission or the European Parliament -- it would have never come to this. My best guess is that they will now re-open the debate to change the directive which is responsible for this ruling. This is how a "human embryo" in the blastocyst stage looks like:
Skin cells become eggs cells to create life... Life created from eggs made from skin cells 4 October 2012 - Stem cells made from skin have become "grandparents" after generations of life were created in experiments by scientists in Japan.
The patent would not be valid in Europe. Like all the software patents that you have in USA that are illegal in Europe. There are patents that are absurd and they are not accepted.
