European agency against stem cells? Or is it?

I know they are making it out to be a pro-life sort of argument or at least it seems that way to me.

But isn't this story really about patents and copyrights? And the whole deal being that the rest of the world does not agree that R&D and gathering money is not directly or indirectly linked to how much money you can squeeze out of it?

Gist of it:

An appeal panel at the European Patent Office upheld a June decision to reject a patent application regarding the use of stem cells filed by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation in 1995.

And this was the most glaring comment within the article:

The problem for companies looking to profit from technology using stem cells is that without patent protection there is little incentive to pour money into research.

Like I said, a lot of countries and cultures have other incentives for technological enhancement.

What about knowledge for the sake of knowledge and for the development of humans in general?

Source: YahooNews