Louis Pasteur's Patents : Agri-Food Biotechnologies, Industry and Public Good

Maurice Cassier (1)

1 CERMES - UMR 8169 / U750 - CERMES - Centre de recherche Médecine, Science, Santé Société

In January 2001, in response to comments that genes were not patentable since they were discoveries and products of nature, the US Patent Office (USPTO) justified the patentability of genes isolated from their natural environment by citing a patent on purified yeast granted to Louis Pasteur in 1873 . Pasteur's patent covered a new process for manufacturing beer that included not only new fermentation methods but also the equipment used and "pure yeast" as an "industrial product obtained by means of these processes" (French patent) or "yeast, free from organic germs of disease, as an article of manufacture" (US patent) . The question of a patent on purified yeast had already been an issue in the US in the 1930s, when patents issued to scientists and the patentability of "products of nature" were called into question . Jurists specialized in industrial property consider the patent granted to Pasteur in 1873 to be "the first known patent covering a micro-organism" . In this paper we examine the conditions in which Louis Pasteur patented biotechnological inventions pertaining to the fermentation and conservation of food products (vinegar, wine, beer), whereas his vaccines invented in the 1880s were not patented . We analyse in detail the structure and scope of his patents, particularly those on beer, which covered purified yeast as an industrial product. While the content of these patents seemed new, so were the uses to which Pasteur put them, to keep control over his inventions and make them freely available to manufacturers. Finally, Pasteur was rewarded for his scientific work and his industrial applications by two National Reward laws passed in 1874 and 1883. National rewards, granted by the state to inventors, were an alternative form of recompense and encouragement . Pasteur's biotechnological inventions were thus set in a context of tension between industrial property and the public good.

Mots clés: patents on life forms; biotechnologies; public good

Domaines: Sociologie; Histoire; Droit

Maurice Cassier. Louis Pasteur's Patents : Agri-Food Biotechnologies, Industry and Public Good . Gaudillière JP, Kevles D, Rheinberger HS Living Properties : Making Knowledge and Controlling Ownerships in the History of Biology , preprint 382 2009, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, ISSN 0948-9444. ⟨hal-01390023⟩