1.   The new patent allows the company to block production in the U.S. of the growth factor by rival companies by using the recombinant process.

2.   The patent also allows shippers and customers to negotiate rates and routes, and to hold interactive auctions to set shipping rates.

3.   These patents allowed firms like Genentech Inc. in South San Francisco and Amgen Inc. in Thousand Oaks to create businesses around the drugs that these patents controlled.

4.   To people who have quietly sided for years with poorer countries that fought to escape the high prices allowed by patents, both moves seem cynical.

5.   With the Senate debating a ban on human cloning, opponents say this patent allows life to be turned into a commodity.

6.   Patents allow inventors to exclude all others from making, using or selling their invention for a specified period of time.

7.   The patents allow a single company to profit from a natural resource, which violates the teachings of Islam, said Abdurahman Alamoudi of the American Muslim Council.