washington

Germany's new left-leaning coalition government might be a stumbling block to the approval of laws governing biotechnology patents, according to an official at the country's Ministry of Justice.

European states have until July 2000 to draw up laws implementing last May's European Union directive on biotechnological inventions (see Nature 393, 299; 1998). The directive allows patents on isolated human genes and gene fragments with known functions, as well as on transgenic life.

But Hans-Georg Landfermann, head of the ministry's subdivision on industrial property protection and copyright law, said last week that “it will not be easy for Germany to comply with the [July 2000] deadline”. The coalition government of Social Democrats and Greens elected in October will probably disapprove of any law that gives broad property rights over genetically engineered organisms. His remarks came at a symposium on international intellectual property rights at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington.

The EU directive was passed after years of controversy, during which the European Patent Office imposed a moratorium on the patenting of plants and animals. Greens strongly opposed the new directive while it was being debated, Landfermann says, and will “scrutinize every word of the draft [German] law”. The Dutch government has appealed to the European Court of Justice to annul the directive, although the appeal is expected to fail (see Nature 395, 736; 1998).

Landfermann said the justice ministry draft will probably be similar to the EU directive. But, he told the symposium, “don't expect much from the German draft law,” which will be “politically difficult” to pass. Meanwhile, he said, the German patent office would follow the new EU policies provisionally.