Following the birth of Dolly the sheep in 1996, Roslin Institute began to explore potential commercial applications of the nuclear transfer technique which had been used to produce her: particularly with the establishment of Roslin Bio-Med during 1997. MAFF claimed to have intellectual property rights over nuclear transfer, with Roslin's counter-argument being that the critical experiment which produced Dolly was funded from Roslin's own reserves. Ultimately, it was agreed that intellectual property rights would be halved between MAFF and Roslin.