Though the ruling was front-page news in Canada, its implications for Harvard are limited.

"I don't think this will have any major impact on our portfolio," said Dr. Jeff Labovitz, director of the Medical School Office of Technology Licensing, which handles the oncomouse technology.

The University claims as intellectual property any mammal genetically altered to express oncogenes, the genes that cause cancer. Harvard has licensed this technology to Delaware chemical giant DuPont, Inc. which sublicenses the rights around the world. As part of the license agreement, DuPont pays the massive legal bills that have been generated by years of litigation.

Though Harvard will not reveal the license fee paid by DuPont, it is small in corporate terms: the University takes in a total of $15 million per year from all technology licensing, a small fraction of its budget.

David Einhorn, counsel at the Jackson Laboratory, a major supplier of laboratory mice that distributes animals covered by the oncomouse patent, said the mice typically sell for about $50 to $60 each.

But Harvard's yield is small because academic researchers are allowed to use the technology free of license fees, according Medical School Genetics Department Chair Phillip Leder, the co-creator of the mouse.

Industry officials said that the impact of the ruling will not be large as Canada is a small market and even in the United States, the demand for the oncomouse is limited.

"There are a number of strains that fit within the definition of the patent but we don't distribute large numbers of these mice," Einhorn said. "I can't imagine Canada's that big a market."