Microbes are not ‘life’ in a biblical sense any more than plants are. (’Life’ in the Bible is characterized by breathing and blood, and plants are never identified as ‘living’ or ‘dying’.) Microbes have been described as a kind of ‘organosubstrate’ that help maintain and supply the biosphere (in their original created context, apart from degeneration into parasites and pathogens).
I rather expect this guy is not creating genes from scratch, such that his ‘creation’ of a microbe is more like a child putting together lego blocks (genes). Just as a child is hopelessly incompetent to manufacture a lego block from scratch, we are still a long way from making a full-fledged, meaningful gene from scratch (atom by atom). We mostly just play around with the ones God has given us.
That said, there is the law of unintended consequences. Making wholesale alterations in a genome could have cascading effects throughout the biosphere that the authors never intended. If scientists can patent their creations for profit, will they also be held responsible for the damage they cause?