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In Canada, the patent examiner initially rejected claims to transgenic animals on the basis that they were not included in the definition of an invention, but allowed claims on the process for obtaining the oncomouse.The Supreme Court of Canada finally ruled in 2002 that higher life forms were not patentable because they were not a "manufacture or composition of matter within the meaning of invention" of the Patent Act **. Manufacture was interpreted as a non-living mechanistic product or process. "Composition of matter" was understood as ingredients or substances that had been combined or mixed together by a person. So while microorganisms, or an oncogene-injected egg capable of maturing into an oncomouse, may be a mixture of ingredients and thus patentable under Canadian Law, the body of a mouse was not. Moreover, the drafters of the Patent Act (1869) had not had mammals in mind and so the Act did not address higher life forms. It was recommended that, as the patentability of such life forms was contentious, the Parliament should engage in public debate to address the complex social and moral issues and close the legislative gap.The dissenting justices, however, questioned the justification for distinguishing between lower life forms, seen as a composition of living matter, and higher life forms, which were not deemed to be compositions of matter. They held that the scientific achievement of altering the genetic material of which an animal - which does not exist in nature in this altered form - is composed, was itself an inventive "composition of matter" within the meaning of the Patent Act.
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