The term biotechnology has not been used for a long time, but practice that nowadays is meant by that term has been used as early as Neolithic Revolution. More specifically, the development of new kind of plants by mixing old ones to make the plants more endurable to environmental factors and to improve the crop used by humans. As the usage of agriculture developed and the fields grew large and harder to maintain biotechnology helped out by various organisms and other by- products that were used for fertilization and taking pests under control.
Biotechnology as also used in medicine even as early as 200BC by mixing various plants and other kind of organism to be immune to a lot of infections. Those old wisdoms have led to the development of antibiotics and vaccines by modern medicine.
From the beginning of the twentieth century scientists started to understand microbiology and developed a way to start producing specific products with that. The modern biotechnology that we know today started from June 16th, 1980 when the US Supreme Court came to a decision that genetically modified microorganism can be patented. In terms of legislations there is still a long way to go as the laws concerning biotechnology and the intellectual property are still rather new and need to be improved.
