PTO turns down Rifkin gambit

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) last week rejected an application for a patent on "human/animal chimeras" that was filed by anti-biotechnology activists Stuart Newman and Jeremy Rifkin.

The PTO rejected the application in part because "the broadest interpretation of the claimed invention as a whole embraces a human being. In particular, appli-cant's claimed invention as set forth in all the independent claims is not limited to non-humans but rather includes within its scope a human being and as such falls outside the scope of protection" of U.S. patent law...