Food

No patents on life

Food
20 companies

No patents on life

20 companies

Goal: Stop patents on life!
For a company to be removed from te boycott list they must reject their patents on life. Adopting a code of conduct to support ‘breeders’ exemption’ and retain patents is not enough. Support companies that fight against patents on life (BUYCOTT)

(source: http://www.biodinamica.org/wp-content/uploads/European_Patents_on_Plants_and_Animals_2014.pdf)
We are at a critical stage: The seeds market is already highly concentrated in several sectors, includingseeds for vegetables, maize and soybeans.

The European Patent Office (EPO) has already granted several thousand patents on plants and seeds, with a steadily increasing number of patents on plants and seeds derived from conventional breeding. Around 2400 patents on plants and 1400 patents on animals have been granted in Europe since the 1980s. More than 7500 patent applications for plants and around 5000 patents for animals are pending. The EPO has already granted more than 120 patents on conventional breeding and about 1000 such patent applications are pending. The scope of many of the patents that have been granted is extremely broad and very often covers the whole food chain from production to consumption. These patents are an abuse of patent law, designed to take control of the resources needed for our daily living.

Analyses of EPO decision-making in recent years show that prohibitions established in patent law of patents on plant and animal varieties and essentially biological processes i.e. conventional methods of plant and animal breeding (Art 53(b) of the European Patent Convention, EPC) have been systematically eroded.

It appears that the EPO have in fact intentionally created an unprecedented situation full of legal absurdities. If all plants with specific characteristics and all processes for breeding (that might be applied in theory) are claimed, there is a high likelihood that the patent will be granted. The applicant only has to make sure that specific varieties or specific processes for essentially biological breeding are not claimed explicitly to be in accordance with the wording of the law. However, in essence, these patents cover plant varieties as well as products and processes of essentially biological processes for breeding. Such patents have in fact already been granted.

These patents granted by the EPO promote market concentration, hamper competition, and serve to promote unjust monopoly rights. Such patents have nothing to do with the traditional understanding of patent law, or with giving fair rewards and incentives for innovation and inventions. Based largely on trivial technical features, they are an abuse of patent law using it as a tool for misappropriation (in effect biopiracy) that turns agricultural resources needed for our daily food production into the so-called intellectual property of just a few big companies.

Maintaining and safeguarding free access to material needed for plant and animal breeding and agricultural production has to become a political priority. Any measures taken must primarily comply with the needs of farmers, traditional breeders and consumers and not with the interests of the ‚patent industry‘. The key point is that patents on the resources needed for our daily lives can only be stopped by political decision-making. There are two steps that have to be taken:

Firstly, securing a vote by the contracting states of the European Patent Organisation (EPOrg) toensure that the interpretation of the EPC is brought in line with a recent European Parliament resolutionstating that generally patents on conventional breeding cannot be granted;
And secondly, starting the process to change European patent laws to exclude patents on geneticresources, on plants and animals.