International Stem Cell Corporation v. Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks, Case C-364/13, CJEU (Grand Chamber), 18 December 2014

Patentability of biotechnological inventions, involving human embryos. Dignity of embryos.  

Art. 1 EUCFR 
Art. 2 EUCFR  
Art. 3 TEU  
Directive 98/44/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 6 July 1998 on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions

1. For the purposes of the exclusion of biotechnological inventions from patentability for moral reasons, there is a distinction between embryonic stem cell technologies based on the fertilized human egg and those based on the unfertilized human egg stimulated by parthenogenesis (i.e. a form of asexual reproduction involving the development of an embryo from an unfertilized egg cell). 

2. The right balance between encouraging biotechnological research, the right to register patents in the European Union and respect fo¬r human dignity and personal integrity allows for the patentability of human partogenetic stem cells.

3. Moral restrictions on embryonic stem cells are applicable only to those embryonic cells that can potentially develop into a human being
(In the instant case, the cells involved were pluripotent cells, and not totipotent cells; therefore, they were unable to develop in a viable human being).