Article 53 of the European Patent Convention prohibits the grant of patents for plant or animal varieties and for inventions whose commercial exploitation would be contrary to ordre public or morality. These provisions are therefore both criteria for the grant of patents and grounds for opposing granted patents. The interpretation of these provisions and their application to particular cases lies ultimately in the hands of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office which have considered both patent applications and oppositions against granted patents on these grounds. This chapter begins with a summary of the law, the procedure for opposing patents on these grounds and the principal decisions in this field. It then reviews the manner in which opponents of patents other than commercial parties – such as pressure groups, political parties and churches – have organised themselves as opponents. Lastly, it considers how these non-commercial opponents have conducted their cases, their degree of success, whether they could do more to question the grant of life form patents – and whether, as the author considers they should, churches and other organisations with ethical credentials should actively question life form patents.

In the early 2000s the Holy See submitted papers to the WIPO and the WTO, on the subject of Intellectual Property (IP) rights, genetic resources, traditional knowledge, and access to medicines. This chapter develops some concepts that are mainly implicit in those papers. Catholic Social Teaching does not address directly the subject of IP rights, but contains all the elements for a moral judgment on the present system of IP rights. The chapter develops the discussion in three parts: first, some ideas about private property and the universal destination of goods, and the right to knowledge; second, proposing a vision of IP rights in the light of the aforesaid principles about property in Catholic Social Teaching; third, examining the issue of IP rights in relation to the rights of native peoples. The essay concludes by arguing that, to ensure that patents serve the universal destination of goods and the common good, a new legal theory should be developed in this area. This would reconsider, especially, rules relating to the public availability of the invention, the right price of the licenses, possible exceptions to the patent, means of technological transfer, and the creation of alternative means of industrial knowledge protection.