[Pirateninfo] etc: USAvsUPOV.pdf

[Martin Sundermann]

WHO CALLS THE SHOTS AT UPOV? US GOVERNMENT AND MULTINATIONAL SEED INDUSTRY
FORCE UPOV TO ABANDON CRITIQUE
OF TERMINATOR
April 17, 2003
ETC Group
The full text of this document is available on the ETC Group website:
http://www.etcgroup.org/article.asp?newsid=393
After two days of intense diplomatic wrangling in Geneva, US patent
officials succeeded in turning the expert advice of an intergovernmental
secretariat critical of Terminator technology into little more than a
promotional paper for plant breeders' rights.
On April 10-11, US government representatives worked hard in Geneva to
convince 51 other countries that the expert advice of the Union for the
Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) is wrong and that UPOV is "not
competent" to comment on the possible intellectual property implications of
Terminator seeds. The paper in question, a memorandum prepared by UPOV's
Secretariat at the request of member governments of the UN Convention on
Biological Diversity (CBD), was presented to an Expert Panel convened by the
CBD in Montreal, February 19-21. The Expert Panel met to examine the
implications of Terminator seed technology for small farmers, indigenous
peoples and local communities. Although UPOV's paper was presented at the
Montreal meeting, and had been available on UPOV's web site since January,
UPOV bowed to US pressure and gutted the memorandum, replacing it with a
sanitized and shorter "position paper" that carries none of the criticisms
of the original report.
In withdrawing its memo on GURTs, UPOV has allowed the US government, owner
of three patents on Terminator technology, to sanitize and erase the
intergovernmental organizations' perspective on an important policy issue
with direct relevance to plant intellectual property.
UPOV's new document is completely irrelevant because it fails to respond to
the CBD's request and offers no new information about the intellectual
property implications of Terminator. The withdrawal of the UPOV memo has
also confounded the work of the CBD's Expert Panel on GURTs that met in
February to consider the impact of Terminator on small farmers, indigenous
people and local communities.
Terminating UPOV? The seedy squabble over Terminator technology illustrates
the bigger issue of UPOV's diminishing position in today's rapidly changing
intellectual property climate. On the one hand, the Americans and Japanese
continue to stretch the boundaries of conventional patents to supersede and
override UPOV-style plant variety protection. On the other hand, new
technologies such as Terminator threaten to make legal forms of monopoly
control over plant germplasm obsolete. Why bother with plant variety
protection when Terminator gives you timeless, limitless protection without
the need for lawyers and courts?
The Bottom Line: UPOV has succumbed to the strong-arm tactics of the US
government and the multinational seed industry, both of whom have vested
financial interests in Terminator technology. If member governments of UPOV
had any doubts about who determines policy within the Union, they need only
examine the recent case of Terminator.
The original UPOV memo and the correspondence between UPOV and the US
government, as well as the ISF letter to UPOV, can be viewed here:
http://www.etcgroup.org/documents/USAvsUPOV.pdf
For more information please see, "Terminator Five Years Later," a new ETC
Communique that provides additional updates on Terminator, new patents, and
more. The full text is available on the ETC web site:
http://www.etcgroup.org/article.asp?newsid=389

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