The Korea Intellectual Property Office said Wednesday that Hwang submitted patent application in Korea and several other countries since 2006, and Korea, Russia, Canada, China, New Zealand and the European Union rejected the application. SooAm Biotech Research, which is headed by Hwang, announced Tuesday that Australia granted the patent for technology for cloning human embryonic stem cells.

According to KIPO, the six countries rejected Hwang’s application because he violated Korean bioethics regulations in the process of making the embryonic stem cells and because the results could not be duplicated.

“The patent offices in these countries accepted the judgment by the investigation committee at Seoul National University and Science magazine that no real cloned human stem cells existed,” an KIPO official said. “We rejected the application on the same grounds.”

The decision is still pending in four countries -- Brazil, India, Japan and the United States. However, some press reports quoted SooAm Biotech Research as saying, “With the positive outcome from Australia, we are hopefully anticipating the results from 10 other countries where we simultaneously applied at the end of 2003.”

An international patent expert said even the Australian patent can be revoked if Hwang’s team fails to present the cloned human embryonic somatic stem cell specified in the documents.

The SNU panel earlier concluded the stem cell line Hwang specified in evidence had been grown by parthenogenesis, i.e. from unfertilized eggs, not by cloning.

(englishnews@chosun.com )