Implications of Patenting
The patent application, with its accompanying description and the deposited material, is held secret in the early stages only for a short time, after which the application must be published.
In many countries (particularly in Europe, e.g. Germany), the process of granting patent starts 18 months after the publication of the application. However, the application can be withdrawn before publication, if the assessment suggests that the patent may not be granted.

 In USA and Japan, however, access of public to deposited material is allowed only after some enforceable right has been granted to the applicant. Following are some of the serious consequences of the easy availability of the deposited material (microorganisms) to the third parties, without any geographical limitations: (i) the loss of effective control on the micro­organism and its uses; (ii) irrevocable loss of the option to revert back to trade secrecy, if patent is not granted; (iii) possibility of circumvention of the patent protection, by other competitors of the applicant through genetic modification of the deposited microorganism. Some efforts are being made to overcome this problem associated with the European Patent Law.