Diamond v. Chakrabarty

Ananda Chakrabarty (plaintiff) was a microbiologist who invented a bacterial organism that could essentially eat crude oil. Some naturally occurring bacteria could digest individual components of crude oil. However, Chakrabarty’s bacterial organism was not naturally occurring and was the first one that could digest multiple components at once. The organism promised to be useful for cleaning up oil spills. Chakrabarty applied for a patent on the organism. The patent office rejected Chakrabarty’s application on the grounds that living things could not be patented. The Court of Customs and Patent Appeals reversed, ruling that Chakrabarty’s live, human-engineered organism could be patented. The commissioner of patents and trademarks, Sidney Diamond (defendant), petitioned the United States Supreme Court for certiorari. Diamond argued that, after passing the Patent Act, Congress had passed two statutes allowing certain human-engineered plants to be patented. Diamond claimed that this legislation was necessary only if Congress had originally excluded all living things from the Patent Act. Diamond also claimed that when Congress originally passed the Patent Act, it did not know about genetic engineering. Diamond believed that patenting this new technology posed dangers and that Congress must be the one to decide whether this subject matter was eligible for patents. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.