This is Gates's hair apparent...

12.02.10: MULTIBILLIONAIRE Bill Gates last night won a state court victory in which it was decided that a child cloned from one of his hairs need not inherit his empire.

Laura X, who may not be named, a former Microsoft employee, had claimed that her six-month-old son was the love child from an affair with Gates which had ended when she became pregnant.

In court, however, a different story emerged. Robert L, a Seattle geneticist, admitted that Miss X, who was his lover for three years, had persuaded him to use his pioneering work on genetic manipulation to clone a male child from one of Gates's hairs.

According to Mr L, Miss X wanted to get back at the software boss for sacking her in 2001.

Mr L picked up the hair when he shared a podium with the Microsoft boss at a science conference 18 months ago. He then analysed the hair to extract Gates's DNA, which was treated before being inserted into a denucleated egg ­ one of Miss X's eggs from which the nucleus had been removed. She bore a healthy male child last autumn. The child is a clone of Bill Gates because his genetic inheritance comes from Gates alone.

Mr L said he decided to break his silence over the incident following a recent split with Miss X. He also admitted that the pair had wanted the cloned child to inherit some of the software billionaire's estate.

Miss X has been arrested and now faces perjury charges. Gates's lawyers are de