FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
                                                            96-21
CONTACT:  Richard Maulsby
          Lisa-Joy Zgorski
          (703)305-8341
                              
             PTO ANNOUNCES NEW POLICY TO PROCESS
             GENE-SEQUENCE BIOTECHNOLOGY PATENTS
                              
ARLINGTON, VA -- The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) today
announced that it will require applicants for multi-sequence gene
patents to limit their claims to ten independent and distinct
nucleotide sequences for each application; for such applications, no
additional fees will be levied.

"We simply don't have the resources to tackle this challenge under
current policy," declared Bruce A. Lehman, Assistant Secretary of
Commerce and Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks, "PTO costs
greatly exceed the $350,000 in application fees that we've collected
for these applications; we receive no taxpayer dollars and simply
cannot subsidize the applications of biotechnology inventors.  It's
just not fair to  the majority of our customer base, inventors
pursuing other worthwhile advances in different technologies."

For at least a decade, researchers in the biotechnology industry
have been filing patent applications claiming isolated DNA and RNA
sequences of nucleotides.  Scientific and technological advances now
permit researchers to rapidly identify large numbers of gene
sequences.  The PTO's pending gene patent applications claim over
500,000 sequences.  The examination of these applications presents
unprecedented search and examination challenges, even with the most
modern equipment.

For the PTO, a fully fee-funded organization that receives no
taxpayer funds for operation, the costs for determining even the
initial patentability of the some 350 pending multi-sequence gene
applications are prohibitive.  PTO estimates that if one patent
examiner were to tackle this task, it would take approximately 200
years.  To initially examine these applications, the entire
biotechnology group of some 200 examiners  would take over one full
year at a cost of over $34 million.

PTO held public hearings in April of 1996 in San Diego, CA and
Arlington, VA to solicit views on this issue.  Feedback has been
evaluated, and the full text of the policy will be published in
PTO's Official Gazette on November 19, 1996.  Copies of this notice
are available now up on request.

October 23, 1996
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