Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Patent Law Blogs -> IPBiz

Patent Law

: IPBiz

Cloning in Korea. Hwang's patent applications back in business?

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Still gun-shy from the Hwang Woo Suk fiasco, the South Korean government is moving slowly on a request by K. Y. Cha and affiliates. The Korea Times reported on Feb. 5, 2009:

After a lengthy meeting Thursday, the National Bioethics Committee decided to delay its decision over whether to allow the Seoul-based Cha Medical Center to conduct research on embryonic stem cells created from cloned human embryos.
Research on cloned human stem cells has been halted in Korea since 2006, when the bioethics committee banned Hwang from continuing his efforts after his landmark studies were exposed as fraudulent.
The Cha Medical Center had applied for approval on therapeutic cloning, claiming that the methods are crucial in developing more effective treatments for Parkinson's diseases, spinal injuries, diabetes, cardiovascular disorders and other difficult medical conditions.

In January 2009, the Korea Times had reported on Hwang's patent applications:

Disgraced gene scientist Hwang Woo-suk is getting a shot at redemption with his former employer, Seoul National University (SNU) transferring him ownership of his disputed work.

Hyun Sang-hwan, Hwang's colleague at the Sooam Biotech Research Center, confirmed that SNU had handed over the intellectual property rights for Hwang's claimed inventions in human stem cell research to H-Bion, a biotech com-pany Hwang established in May last year.

SNU announced last month on its decision to withdraw patent applications related to Hwang's work and said it would consider transferring the rights to local companies or institutions seeking to continue research.

The school's business foundation had applied for patents on Hwang's technologies in 11 countries, including the Untied States and Australia, in June and July of 2006. However, SNU fired Hwang later in the year after his studies on cloned human stem cells were deemed as fraudulent.

According to Korean law, intellectual property rights for inventions produced by employees of national universities belong to the state. Thus, the patents that had been reviewed by patent authorities overseas were filed under SNU's name, with Hwang listed as one of the 19 inventors, which put the university in the awkward position of representing someone it had expelled.
Monday's deal allows Hwang to keep the patent applications alive under the name of H-Bion. In selling the owner-ship of Hwang's work to H-Bion, SNU was paid 140 million won, identical to the amount of money spent by the school in applying for the patents, a source said.
Hwang reached a rare rock-star status for a scientist in 2005 by claiming to have created cloned embryos from pa-tient-specific embryonic stem cells. Although the study was later exposed as containing fake data, Hwang continues to insist that his technology is legitimate.
The patent application filed in the 11 countries relates to a human embryonic stem cell line, NT-1, that Hwang claimed to have generated through somatic cell nuclear transfer in a separate study in 2004. His work was published by peer-review journal Science.

Of the Australian case, see the previous IPBiz post:

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/09/hwang-woo-suk-stem-cell-patent-to-issue.html

See also

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/11/hiearchies-in-google-hwang-woo-suk-then.html

Full post as published by IPBiz on February 19, 2009 (boomark / email).