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: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...

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: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.

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.