CAP: GE Lawsuit

GE Patent Lawsuit

FROM MARCH 1999

Below is a very important article on biotech patents, or the corporate ownership of lifeforms.

Patenting their modified lifeforms as inventions is key to the projected profits of biotech companies. And yet - could they really invent a lifeform from scratch, including breathing life into it?

Or are they just making small (but impactful) modifications on creations invented by an intelligence much greater than ours - creations that were given to all of us, as part of natural design? Do they have the right to setup fences in bio-space, charging everyone whatever toll they choose to get access to our shared genetic stock? And is it ok if they protect this "right", their "possession", by making it unable to reproduce, introducing death into the seeds of life and breaking our 10,000 year old tradition of seed-saving by farmers and communities?

This court case asks just these questions, challenging the right of corporations to patent seeds. The biotech industry is deeply concerned about how this could reduce their profits and slow down their rapid introduction of crudely modified food and animals into our bodies, fields, and the shared ecosystems upon which we all depend. It may be an opportunity for our society to really ask some of the questions that should be asked before such modified products are, irrevocably, released into our lives - with their predictable negative outcomes.

Note - when reading this article, you might want to ask yourself where the money for these huge projected profits will come from. From farmers, already on tight margins as agribusiness companies make high profits? From consumers? Someone must pay for these profits to occur, and this is a huge shift of income, wealth - and power. Is it really in our benefit - or primarily the biotech companies....?

Also - if anyone has updated information on this case, we'd be most interested.

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Excerpts from the article

BIOTECH INDUSTRY SHIVERS AT THREAT TO SEED PATENTS

Wall Street Journal, March 3, 1999 p. B1

A legal challenge to a fundamental premise of the biotechnology industry - the patentability of modified plants - is setting off a wave of fear inside big agriculture companies.

An Iowa seed merchant is arguing that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office erred in granting patents on modifications to plants such as corn, soybeans, and cotton. A federal appeals court agreed to rule on the issue in October, and word has been quietly spreading since. The court's action indicates that the patentability of manmade plants remains legally untested, and that places at risk much of the billions of dollars in investments by companies such as Monsanto Co, DuPont Co and Novartis AG.

"What could be at stake is a very significant deterrent to research," says Vernon Rice, chief intellectual-property counsel at DuPont. "You'd still have a biotechnology industry, but not a robust one."

When the patent office granted the first modified-plant patent in 1985, chemical companies and seed concerns began to spend heavily on research and acquisitions. The result has been thousands of patents on products that are just now sweeping across the U.S. farm belt and South America.

[PD NOTE: Did the patent office just decide to do this? Or did the chemical companies prompt them to? You be the judge...]

Industry analysts have predicted that the premiums farmers pay annually for the seed to grow these crops, currently in the hundreds of millions of dollars, would soon leap into the billions. But that economic model could fall apart if patents for biotech patents lose their legal force.

The issue before the appeals court represents an almost accidental test of plant patents.... [Marvin Redenius, president of a farm supply dealership in Belmond Iowa,]...bought 600 bags of Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. corn seed last year from a third company for about $54,000, then resold the bags to his customers.

Pioneer got paid for the seed. But it sued Mr. Redenius' company.... Under its newly won corn-plant patents, Pioneer says, only it gets to decide who sells its corn seed. Mr. Redenius didn't have Pioneer's permission.

Mr. Redenius and his attorney came up with a straightforward defense strategy: They requested that the case be thrown out on the grounds that plant patents are illegal because Congress doesn't want the major food crops to be patented.

[The judge rejected the dismisal request.] ... But he considered the contention to be serious enough to warrant the attention of a higher court, and he cleared the way for the patent-legality issue to be resolved.

In a rare procedural move, the federal appeals court in Washington that specializes in patent law decided to take up the patent-legality issue. Oral arguments could begin as early as this spring. The case itself, meanwhile, has been postponed pending the appeals court's decision.

The Americal Intellectual Property Law Association, a trade group of patent attorneys, is preparing a friend-of-the-court brief in favor of keeping plant patents....[or else, they say, it'd hurt the biotech industry.]

Some company executives and intellectual-property lawyers are worried that the court case is creating an opening for anti-biotechnology groups, which question the safety of altered food and oppose corporate ownership of crops.

[Article discusses opposition in Europe; Monsanto enforcement.]

Patent attorneys say that plant patents are the most legally contested variety these days, next to software.

[GE Roundup Ready soybeans] is on track to reap roughly $300 million this year in revenue for (Monsanto) and its partners.....

All told, Monsanto owns more than a hundred patents for specialty lines of corn and soybeans, among other crops. David Snively, assistant general counsel for Monsanto, figures that the company's most valuable patents - which cover genes that it transplants into crops from microorganisms - are in the clear because they aren't from plants. But some legal experts at other companies aren't so sure.

[PD NOTE: Snively? Does he twirl his handlebar mustache when he says this? ("Stay tuned next week for more of 'Snively Whiplash and his Dastardly Deeds...!' "]

[Plant patents started from 1980 US Supreme court case allowing General Electric to patent a genetically-altered oil-eating bacterium.] The patentability of asexually reproducing plants such as roses and fruit trees, which are grown from cuttings and grafting, was established by Congress in a 1930 law. But seeds and plant breedings are the issues in the Iowa case, and Congress has [in the past] tried to ensure that rival companies could continue to use each other's seed in their breeding programs. Lawmakers have also protected the right of farmers to save seed from their harvests for replanting the next year. Both of those activities could be prohibited by patents.

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