-----Original Message-----
From: Biotech-Mod2
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2001 9:06 AM
To: 'biotech-room2@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: Re: Nuna bean
[A reminder to participants who joined the conference after 20 March and who thus might not have received all the messages (10 in total, including the one below) posted so far: To receive them, send an e-mail message to mailserv@mailserv.fao.org leaving the subject blank and enter the one-line text message as follows: send listlog/biotech-room2.mar2001 ...Moderator]
Many thanks to Edo Lin [23 March] for his views on controversial Nuna bean patents. I am not a nuna bean breeder and I do not wish that this conference should devote a lot of time on discussing a single issue but I thought it is better to inform the views from the other side.
Below is a summary I have made from the article by the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) on this case (available on the web at http://www.rafi.org/web/allnews-one.shtml?dfl=allnews.db&tfl=allnews-one-frag.ptml&operation=display&ro1=recNo&rf1=136&rt1=136&usebrs=true ) for information. The points raised here, if true, deserve attention of all.
1. Some bean breeders have argued that the patent should be rejected because the method used by the breeders was 'obvious' -- which should have excluded it from patentability. Improving a variety involves crossing the parents to bring together different traits and then selecting the progeny having the combination of desirable traits. In the case of the nuna bean, the crosses were 'obvious' to any one skilled in the art of bean breeding. While the inventors may have done painstaking breeding work, the results are not necessarily 'inventive.' Bean breeders had, in fact, already written about the nuna bean suggesting how to adapt the breed. 'The patent does exactly what we recommended in some of our publications,' wrote Dr Dan Debouck, Head of the Genetic Resources Unit at CIAT. Experts acknowledge that Ehlers and Sterner (Patent Owners) did serious breeding work on this bean, however, many people question whether or not the bean meets the criteria of a patentable invention.
2. Breach of 'Trust': The patent is particularly offensive to Andean farmers and indigenous people because it extends to crosses involving at least 33 Andean nuna varieties traditionally bred and developed over centuries in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia. US Patent 6,040,503 lists all 33 accessions of nuna bean held in the USDA's national germplasm collection. All of the nuna bean varieties listed in the patent were freely provided by Andean farming communities, who allowed their bean varieties to be put into the public realm in order to ensure the continued maintenance of the world's seed biodiversity. In 1994, mounting concern over public collections being privatized led the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to declare designated germplasm in CGIAR gene banks to be 'in trust,' meaning that the germplasm cannot be restricted by monopoly patents. Of the 33 nuna bean varieties listed in the patent, nine are also held in CIAT's international bean collection. All are designated in-trust accessions and all are farmers varieties collected in Peru.
3. Although CGIAR has not taken a public position on the popping bean patent, CGIAR officials expressed concern about the popping bean patent at the Global Forum on Agricultural Research in Dresden in May 2000.
4. Breeding concern: Bean breeders are concerned about the patent. Carl Jones, a graduate student in Plant Breeding and Genetics at Oregon State University, United States, who has worked extensively with Andean crops, believes that the patent is a serious threat to bean breeding. 'The patented claim is really just an attempt to patent the 'nuna' characteristic which has been developed and preserved by the Andean peoples for centuries. The claim severely limits improvements in this crop; many of these changes could be useful to the Andean peoples from which it comes.' Jim Myers, a bean breeder at Oregon State University, has been working on adapting nunas for many years. 'Technically, the patent prevents any research [in countries where the patent has been accepted] on the nunas without permission from the 'inventors.' If I make available any of the varieties I have been working on, and someone else develops a commercial use for them, there would have to be concern about possible patent infringement,' he notes.
5. Organizations opposing the patent include among others: Asociacioon Regional de Productores Ecologicos del Cusco (ARPEC); Asociacion Nacional de Productores Ecologicos (ANPE); Municipalidad Distrital de Maras; Municipalidad Provincial de Chumbivilcas; Instituto Nacional de Investigacion Agraria (INIA); Programa Nacional de Cultivos Andinos; the Peruvian Society for Environmental Law (SPDA); and the Asociacion Qechua Aymara para la Conservacion de la Naturaleza y el Desarrollo Sostenible (ANDES).
Ancha Srinivasan, Ph.D.
Senior Researcher, Regional Science Institute
4-13, Kita 24 Nishi 2, Kita-ku, Sapporo 001-0024 Japan
Tel:+81-11-717-6660 Fax: +81-11-757-3610
E-mail: ancha@vtt.co.jp or ancha_s@yahoo.com
[To contribute to this conference, send your message to biotech-room2@mailserv.fao.org For further information on the FAO Electronic Forum on Biotechnology in Food and Agriculture see http://www.fao.org/biotech/forum.asp ]
-----Original Message-----
From: Biotech-Mod2
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2001 5:00 PM
To: 'biotech-room2@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: IPRs and public international agricultural research
[Thanks to Domininc Glover for his clear and thought-provoking message. Any comments ??...Moderator]
My name is Dominic Glover. I am a Research Assistant at the Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, England. I am currently working on a research project on the international governance of biotechnology, and its impact on food security in less developed countries. IPRs represent an important element of this project.
I would like to recommend to participants in this conference the abstract of a presentation delivered by Dr. Gary Toenniessen, Food Security Director for the Rockefeller Foundation, at 'BioVision 2001', The World Life Sciences Forum, in Lyon, France, in February 7-10. His topic was 'Public Sector Plant Research and the International Agricultural Research System in the Era of Biotechnology'. The abstract and slides can be accessed via the BioVision website at: http://www.biovision.org/muscript/frameset.html?1 [Note: password required.]
Dr. Toenniessen's presentation is a clear, concise, and highly cogent analysis of the effect of IPRs in restricting the flow of knowledge and germplasm between the public and private agricultural research sectors. He explains how this situation has come about and proposes quite an innovative, commercially-based solution to the problem.
Dr. Toenniessen points out that each incremental improvement in a crop is based on previous generations of the plant. Patenting each of these improvements means that successive layers of IPRs 'accumulate' in the plant material so that germplasm is often 'highly IP encumbered'. Consequently the flow of knowledge and plant material between the public ('public-good') and private ('for-profit') sectors is being restricted. This is a particular disadvantage to poor farmers in less developed countries, who previously benefited from the free flow of knowledge and planting material that helped to drive the Green Revolution. This problem even applies when research is carried out in publicly funded institutions in the North, because increasingly the research outputs are patented and licensed to the private sector to be exploited commercially.
In Dr. Toenniessen's view, IPRs are to be expected when commercial organisations are involved. Unfortunately, agricultural-research institutions in the public sector generally lack the necessary legal expertise to manage IPRs. Therefore, Dr. Toenniessen believes that the challenge is, how to facilitate the licensing of useful technology for the benefit of the public agricultural research system and poor countries. He proposes that public institutions should 'pool' their IPRs in a 'professionally-administered IP portfolio designated to serve poor farmers'. This would provide what he referred to at BioVision as 'an entity', which would be capable of negotiating professionally with the corporations' lawyers, and trusted to handle commercially-sensitive IP. Dr. Toenniessen argues that this could 'help reinvigorate the international agricultural research systems by re-establishing the flow of advanced scientific knowledge and research materials to and through the system.'
I think that some prior questions need to be addressed, particularly the question of whether patents are appropriate and efficient instruments for promoting innovation, rewarding invention, and promoting the sharing of knowledge and sound scientific practice. However, if you accept that the machinery of patents, licensing etc. is a fact of life today, Dr. Toenniessen's proposal seems to me to be an original and pragmatic one, which might help to secure some of the potential benefits of biotechnology for poor countries. However, I am not aware of any practical initiatives to implement anything like it, and as a political economist I am not sure that the commercial incentive or the political will exist to create such a system. I would be interested to hear the views of other participants in this conference.
Dominic Glover LL.B. MA
Institute of Development Studies,
University of Sussex,
Brighton BN1 9RE, UK
Email: D.Glover@ids.ac.uk
[To contribute to this conference, send your message to biotech-room2@mailserv.fao.org For further information on the FAO Electronic Forum on Biotechnology in Food and Agriculture see http://www.fao.org/biotech/forum.asp ]