Jurassic Patent: How Colossal Biosciences is attempting to own the “woolly mammoth”

Revive & Restore, a de-extinction organization in Sausalito, California, that is working toward reviving the passenger pigeon, says it doesn’t think the birds should be controlled by intellectual-property claims. “Revive & Restore will not be patenting de-extinct passenger pigeons,” says Elizabeth Bennett, a spokesperson for the organization. The organization envisions that if it succeeds in reintroducing the birds, they will be “protected under existing wildlife laws,” Bennett says. Even some genetic engineers involved in the mammoth project, initiated more than decade ago at Harvard University, have mixed opinions on patenting de-extinct animals. Cory Smith, now a biotech executive, was a student when he helped prepare an earlier patent application on engineered elephants, which the school filed in 2021. “I am not sure it should have an owner,” says Smith. “I have always been on the side that maybe the animals shouldn’t be patented.” During its press blitz last week, Colossal was c ... Read full article.