An inventor can use it exclusively, license it to others, or sit on it. When the patent expires the invention enters the public domain. It is disconcerting to think of researchers with their micromanipulators and fully degenerate probes slicing and dicing the world's genome. That may or may not change. As long as some way can be found to make it pay, the manipulation will continue.
Several reforms are possible.
We could revise our antiquated patent laws, not necessarily ruling out some form of patent protection for bioengineered life forms that would not otherwise exist. Or we could let scientists have process patents on the technology they invent but not product patents on the organisms they modify. Public pressure could be brought to bear on the PTO to tighten up its policies, which have been extraordinarily generous to the industry. Indigenous plants and their properties which peoples have freely used for thousands of years can suddenly be expropriated and patented by multinational corporations. By itself, patent policy cannot address the greater problems of whether there is to be any democratic control of the uses of biotechnology and what regulation is necessary to protect us from its dangers.