— Malcolm HarrisThings came to a head in the fateful year of 1980, and the OTL got a series of green lights to leave the gray area. First, in June, the Supreme Court cleared up some of the ambiguity in Diamond v. Chakrabarty, which explicitly allowed people to patent synthetic organisms—privatizing life.
Replicated under Fair Use from Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris.