Iraq law Requires Seed Licenses

Doc Ruby writes "The American Administrator of the Iraqi CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) government, Paul Bremer, updated Iraq's intellectual property law to 'meet current internationally-recognized standards of protection.' The updated law makes saving seeds for next year's harvest, practiced by 97% of Iraqi farmers in 2002, the standard farming practice for thousands of years across human civilizations, newly illegal. Instead, farmers will have to obtain a yearly license for genetically modified seeds from American corporations. These GM seeds have typically been modified from IP developed over thousands of generations by indigenous farmers like the Iraqis, shared freely like agricultural 'open source.' Other IP provisions for technology in the law further integrate Iraq into the American IP economy."

Comments

Mod story = misleading

[Picass0]

It is only illegal to save the GM seeds from one year to the next. Those farmers using the GM seeds are bound to the terms of a contract - just like someone using the GPL is bound to those terms.

A farmer not buying GM seeds is not compelled legally to do a damn thing different.

Re:Oh, bullshit....

[general_re]

That's not how living systems work, particularly not plants which use freaking wind-blown "sperm" in the form of pollen.

Which doesn't include crops in Iraq, BTW, which kind of blows this whole comment away. The predominant crops in Iraq are barley and wheat, both of which are self-pollinators that do not rely on the wind to propagate. But you still got the obligatory fascism jab in, so it wasn't a total loss, I guess...

Re:Oh, bullshit....

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh. Self-pollination is _possible_, yes - But that doesn't mean cross-pollination is excluded!

You were just wrong, and the grandparent's fascism comment right on the mark. Fascist.

Re:What was the original purpose of the patent sys

[3StrangeAllies]

Originally, the purpose of patents is to secure a right for the inventor to exvclude people from stepping onto his findings and discoveries. It is a way to allow the inventor to get his money back on the time he spent searching.
Without getting into details of the patent theory, the 4 most celebrated reasons why patents exist are (according to late Judge Giles Rich) :

• Incentive to inovate - back in the 1790s, there wasn't any big pharmaceutical laboratory or Del Monte, so to allow inventors to spend their time inventing and not wasting their talents down the factory, patents were a nice way to insure some subsides...
  
• Incentive to disclose - the bargain between the patentee and the PTO is protection v. disclosure. Hence, the new discovery is readily available for the rest of mankind, and promote the progress of arts and sciences
  
• Incentive to comercialize - the patent gives a right to exclude people from using the patented invention, making the inventor the manager of his rights (either licensing to other company or enjoying is own monopoly of distribution)
  
• Incentive to design around -- Because once you know what is patented, it can give you new ideas. Unfortunatly, it has been struck down somewhat by the so called doctrine of equivalent
  

More info : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patents ;
http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/ipr/pat ent_main_bywipo.html [1000ventures.com].

However, the US have really blown a fuse here... It is enslaving a foreign country to the almighty US. For the oil, well, I could understand the general purpose, even though I do NOT agree with it. But this is just mean and wicked...

Oh well, 51% cannot be wrong. Or can they ? ;)

Just my 2 Eurocents...

Only applies to patented seeds

[caffeine_monkey]

This from the PDF:

65) Chapter Threequater, Article 14 is added to read as follows: "Taking into consideration the provisions of Articles 15 and 16 of this Chapter: A. After registration of the variety, the following acts with respect to the propagating material of the protected variety (my emphasis) shall require the authorization of the breeder: 1. production or reproduction (multiplication); 2. conditioning for the purpose of propagation; 3. offering for sale; 4. selling or otherwise marketing; 5. exporting; 6. importing; or 7. stocking for any of the purposes mentioned cited in this paragraph.

I believe this means that this only applies to patented seeds. Of course, the law may or may not say anything about the patentability of common, naturally occurring seeds (eg. texas-based Ricetec's attempt to patent several varieties of basmati rice).

The article misreads the law

[belmolis]

I'm no fan of either the US invasion of Iraq or of the shennanigans of companies like Monsanto, but the revised IP law simply doesn't say what the article says it says. The relevant provision is on p.22, section 66, par. B. It prohibits farmers from re-using the seed of protected varieties only. It doesn't prohibit them from re-using the seed that they've always used. And contrary to what some posters have claimed, Monsanto and other such companies cannot acquire ownership of traditional varieties. The same law provides clear criteria for patents that allow patenting only of newly developed varieties. So unless patents are granted improperly (a different, though as we know, significant problem), farmers in Iraq can go right on re-using their seed just as they always have.

Indeed, I was struck by one provision of this law, which grants fewer rights to the patent holder than does US patent law. Section 8 on p.3. allows people who started using or manufacturing, or even preparing to use or manufacture, something covered by a patent before the issuance of the patent, to continue to do so! In other words, no submarine patents! In some ways, this new patent law is actually progressive.

By the way, parts of this law sound to me like they were not written by a native speaker of English. Maybe I just don't know the technical terminology of plant breeding. Is it normal in English to talk about the "education" of a plant? This sounds like a mistranslation from another language to me.

Re:Typical bias

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Only if the farmers are using GM seeds. If they use normal seeds, then there is no problem with holding back seed for next year.

WRONG.

Percy Schmeiser's battle.

Even though Schmeiser didn't intend to grow the plant, didn't profit from it's growth, and in fact tried to eradicate it, he was still sued, and he lost. He wasn't able to eradicate it because Monsanto made the plants hard to kill by design.

Ingenious business model, really. Maybe I'll design a (non-fatal) virus that is effectively treated by a medicine that I control. I'll sue anyone that attempts to treat it any other way. Afterall, if you don't want to pay my price, just don't get sick, right?

I think you've rather betrayed your own bias.

Re:Mod story = true

[frost22]

A farmer not buying GM seeds is not compelled legally to do a damn thing different.

You are sadly mistaken.

just ask this guy

Re:No different

[Anonymous Coward]

and any so-called "infected" crop can easily be removed

Have you ever grown a plant? Or bred a plant? Do you have any idea how stupid this sounds? You can't tell by the seeds which ones are infected. That means you plant all your seeds, and now you have to monitor your crops to see if they're infected. Depending on the degree of the rogue polinaztion, you could find yourself killing sizeable portions of the plants you worked hard to get started.

And what if the infection is not easily visible, but could be detected via genetic testing? Guess what? You're fucked. Not all traits of a parent show up in the offspring.

I can't believe people take the attitude you're expressing here. Do you realize Mansanto has already developed and patented a technology that has been called "terminator"? The technology can be used across a wide species to introduce the characteristic of plants producing sterile seeds. They will bring that tech to market, once the idea of patenting plants takes root. I can't wait until that trait escapes into the wild.

I'm not anti-GMO's at all. But mansanto is one company that consistantly goes too far. And this "ip" law, what's next? Patenting air? This is absurdity and I'm shocked that people don't see the slippery slope this is. Protecting patents for inventions is one thing, changing the rules of nature through law, depriving farmers of an age old right, fuck that. Let mansanto make money somewhere else, don't legislate monopolies into existance. This is insane.

Re:Oh, bullshit....

[frost22]

Call me when you have something more than hysteria from the veggie crew

As you whish. Google is your friend.

yes it is different

[zogger]

-- the rates are not necessarily low, it's a huge variable, it can be from a lot, to very little, but the bottom line is, if it's in your crop they claim it's *theirs* no matter how it got there.

-- plants haven't been patented for hundreds of thousands of years

-- "easily removed" is simply .. well.. laughable. Junk science. It's ludicrous. If what you claim is true,please, go up to canuckistan and make you an easy billion or more "easily removing" canola superweed for folks, you should be able to clean up with your superior skills and advanced agronomy techniques.

-- the cost of even testing is huge, and guess who pays it

-- to use the word "stealing" referring to someone who's crop got infected is blaming the victim, it's like if someone chucked a baseball through your window, you had to pay for the window, and they guy who threw it calls you a thief for stealing his baseball and not giving it back, and the way this plant IP law works it's exactly like that. It is pure nuts, unfair, stupid, misguided, harmful, and does not promote the useful arts and sciences, it promotes the establishment of a small handful of international corporations owning the planets food supply.

This action by the US government and it's appointed stooge puppets in iraq is heinous and proves what utter corrupt bastards they are, along with the companies pushing this scheme.

Once again we have proven we have the best government big corporate money can buy. You can approve of their actions, I disapprove, so we'll leave it at that.

Re:Oh, bullshit....

[Grym]

The predominant crops in Iraq are barley and wheat, both of which are self-pollinators that do not rely on the wind to propagate.

You're right. Contamination, while possible, isn't likely with the crops being grown in Iraq.

However, one of the most difficult aspects to explain to people is that it doesn't have to be likely for GMO contamination to occur for mass genetic contamination to soon follow.

Here's why: GM crops are, by definition, better at surviving. While we normally think of animals when we think of the word competition, the truth is that all organisms, including plants, compete. Those that compete better, reproduce better, and are, therefore, better represented (proportionally) in subsequent generations. This phenomenon is called natural selection. And the basis for the differences doesn't have to be likely--only possible--for it to have widespread effects.

Look at bacteria. Mutations aren't likely. In fact, the mutational rate in mitochondrial DNA is 1.6 x 10^-7 per site per generation (Evolutionary Analysis, Third Edition). The one for nuclear DNA (I can't find it right now) is even lower. And yet, anti-biotic resistance stemming from these unlikely mutations is becoming ever more problematic to the point where some studies have predicted many antibiotics to soon become completely ineffective.

So, here's an example of the problem: One of the planting seasons, a stray pollen from a GM crop lands in a natural crop and forms a viable offspring with only ONE other plant. We can agree that, while this event is rare in and of itself, it is bound to happen eventually given the number of plants, the amount of pollen, and the time involved. The offspring formed from this union are more resilient than their peers and produce more seeds. Now, let's assume our farmer is dumb and doesn't artificially select for the plants that produced the most. Instead, he randomly picks seeds from his entire crop. The seeds for the next generation have a small amount of the GM seeds in them, but since GM plants compete better, this proportion increases at an exponential rate every season. In fact, given enough time, the GM plants (or at least their descendants) will force the competing plants out of existence. Thus complete genetic contamination occurred, regardless of the fact that the individual event of contamination is rare. Granted, for our example, years, perhaps even decades have passed for the complete change in the crop, but remember, we are assuming that 1.) Contamination only occurs once 2.) No major disruptions (drought, flood, pestilence, etc.) occur, which would dramatically speed up this process and 3.) Our farmer has no fore-thought and doesn't select seeds only from the best plants to put in the next generation.

The real evil thing about all of this is that the genetic engineers (or should I say the corporations) holding the patents know this. All of this is ecology and evolutionary biology 101. But it's not like a judge is going to know that. I guess the prospect of every farmer paying licensing fees every season is too much to resist.

-Grym

Re:WTF? I can do with my seeds what I want to do!

[Mr. Roadkill]

And, after all, this is totally stupid. Only ways how to construct something should be protected by IP law, not the products themselves and what the owner does with them.

I never said it was right; I said it was the way things are. The way things stand at the moment, the law states that (a) some corporation's IP is embodied in those plants, and (b) they can prevent others using that IP. Obviously, since selective defence of patents is looked at very closely in patent suits, and GlobalMegaPlantCorp lawyers are likely to be pretty sharp, there must be some kind of licence to cover the fact that their IP is being duplicated millions or billions of times on each farm that uses their seeds. They don't prosecute the farmer who delivers his crop to the oil press, yet he's made billions of copies of the protected seeds...

Here again, if I have a normal contract of purcase, the crops become my property. If the seller had any contracts that prohibited him from selling it to me, it's his problem.

I wish that was true. As the law stands, GM plants contain somebody's IP, and that somebody gets the right to say what it can be used for. The fact that someone has given or sold you a copy of someone elses intellectual property doesn't exempt you from the laws associated with that intellectual property.

I don't agree with the concept of legally preventing people saving a portion of their crop as seed stock; that's fundamentally wrong, in my opinion. I also think that allowing the patenting of aspects of plants is legislative negligence, because I can't think of a single example of another patent which has the danger of polluting the IP of others (whether private or public domain) with its own IP without knowledge or consent.

I can see why particular companies would want plant patents. Monsanto's patents on glyphosate will have expired by now, meaning that anyone can produce a Roundup-workalike legally. Producing plants which are glyphosate-resistant and covered by patents helps them do two things. It gets them an income peripherally associated with an old herbicide with very strong brand recognition, and it gets genes associated with resistance to that herbicide out into wild relatives - this is important, because it means that by the time the plant patent expires, glyphosate will be commercially useless for both themselves and their competitors and there will be a marketing opportunity for the "Next Big Herbicide" and its matching resistant crops. Paranoid? Me? Maybe, but I don't think so. They have to know those things will crossbreed and go feral. If they get the opportunity to litigate a few other seed suppliers out of business along the way too, so much the better. You think Microsoft looks like a litigious, anticompetitive bullyboy now? They're going to look pretty tame in comparison with companies like Monsanto, unless people start waking up to the dangers associated with our current patent system and take action to correct it.

I have no problem with people protecting their research and effort, provided that they can do so without forcing others to use that IP without their consent. By effectively releasing those plant genes into the wild, it's only a matter of time before "infringing copies" start appearing in other wild and commercial plants. Patents were meant to stop others using your ideas without your consent - they were never meant to allow you to sneak your ideas into the work of others and then demand compensation.