Oil-Eating Bacterium

Ananda Chakrabarty, General Electric, USA, patent 4,259,444 of 1981. The case that let life be patented.

Overview

GE microbiologist Ananda Chakrabarty engineered a Pseudomonas bacterium carrying plasmids that let it break down several components of crude oil. The patent office refused a claim on the organism itself because living things were not patentable. In Diamond v. Chakrabarty in 1980, the Supreme Court ruled five to four that a man-made microorganism is patentable, citing anything under the sun that is made by man. The bacterium was never used on a real spill, but the ruling opened the door to the biotechnology industry.