Working around patents is still possible, and I know of at least one case where that happened. Since the workaround was released as open source, the potential value of the patent dropped overnight.

On top of that, open source work that pre-dates a patent may be used to invalidate that patent. Although the patent office checks patent applications only against old patents, any prior art invalidates the patent. The problem here, of course, is that the open source project probably would need to go to court to invalidate the patent.

On the other hand, the law would be mainly an “industrial” regulation — it would be unlikely to be enforced against personal gardeners.

Raoul wrote, “the entire war doesn�t jive with 50 years of established international law.” However, when a country (Iraq) attacks the military forces of another (the US) for ten years, invading that country is clearly not in violation of international law.

Raoul continued, “just because the implementation of the law does not specifically correlate with your understanding of international patent law (you are self described as not being an expert) is exactly the point.” I agree that this was the point, although not the point that Raoul was trying to make. The article referred to patent law, but if Bremer had created plant patents, seed saving would be entirely legal. Bremer created something of a registry for certain varieties of plants. Saving those seeds from year-to-year is illegal, although farmers have the option of purchasing plants that aren’t pedigreed and registered.

I didn’t vote for Bremer, so I don’t know why I felt a need to defend his actions. Creating new forms of IP law wasn’t his assignment. However, any law Bremer had a hand in can be changed. The Iraqis have already changed other laws Bremer created (most famously capital punishment).

Sorry, Max but the entire war doesn�t jive with 50 years of established international law in the first place. Therefore, just because the implementation of the law does not specifically correlate with your understanding of international patent law (you are self described as not being an expert) is exactly the point. This is another example of the Iraqi�s being screwed by the international conglomerates who have hired the US Marine Corps as their mercenaries. Who could possibly think that Monsanto would let Bechtel and Haliburton have all the fun without getting their own piece of hell.

Problems with “the legal framework”:

• patents have limited jurisdiction;
• after elections in January, Iraq will have a legislature able to make any changes to the law (although they already made some changes);
• in the US, patents on plants only apply to a specific gene pattern (see “Asexual Reproduction”) — only “clones” of the original plant are protected (so plants that grow from seeds of a patented plant are not protected — so “saving seeds” will continue to be permitted).

Problems with the interpretation of the law:

• the law permits Iraqi breeders to register for “Plant Variety Protection” (pg. 15), something different than a plant patent;
• the law is clearly meant to create a form of intellectual property for Iraqi breeders, not for international corporations (see pg. 17);
• this may prevent farmers from saving seeds, but Iraqi breeders will be permitted to save seeds (in fact, that’s the point);
• more importantly, saving seeds of family-bred crops is not illegal (just as US copyright law only applies to copyrighted books — handing down family journals and recipes is outside the scope of US copyright restrictions).

Iraqi Farmers Aren’t Celebrating World Food Day
Nov 11, 2004

As part of sweeping “economic restructuring” implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations — including seeds the Iraqis themselves developed over hundreds of years. That is because in recent years, transnational corporations have patented and now own many seed varieties originated or developed by indigenous peoples. In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo: Pay Monsanto, or starve.
When the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) celebrated biodiversity on World Food Day on October 16, Iraqi farmers were mourning its loss.

A new report [1] by GRAIN and Focus on the Global South has found that new legislation in Iraq has been carefully put in place by the US that prevents farmers from saving their seeds and effectively hands over the seed market to transnational corporations. This is a disastrous turn of events for Iraqi farmers, biodiversity and the country’s food security. While political sovereignty remains an illusion, food sovereignty for the Iraqi people has been made near impossible by these new regulations.

“The US has been imposing patents on life around the world through trade deals. In this case, they invaded the country first, then imposed their patents. This is both immoral and unacceptable”, said Shalini Bhutani, one of the report’s authors.

Becoming Monsanto customers at the barrel of a US gun.
The new law in question [2] heralds the entry into Iraqi law of patents on life forms – this first one affecting plants and seeds. This law fits in neatly into the US vision of Iraqi agriculture in the future – that of an industrial agricultural system dependent on large corporations providing inputs and seeds.

In 2002, FAO estimated that 97 percent of Iraqi farmers used saved seed from their own stocks from last year’s harvest or purchased from local markets. When the new law – on plant variety protection (PVP) – is put into effect, seed saving will be illegal and the market will only offer proprietary “PVP-protected” planting material “invented” by transnational agribusiness corporations. The new law totally ignores all the contributions Iraqi farmers have made to development of important crops like wheat, barley, date and pulses. Its consequences are the loss of farmers’ freedoms and a grave threat to food sovereignty in Iraq. In this way, the US has declared a new war against the Iraqi farmer.

“If the FAO is celebrating ‘Biodiversity for Food Security’ this year, it needs to demonstrate some real commitment”, says Henk Hobbelink of GRAIN, pointing out that the FAO has recently been cosying up with industry and offering support for genetic engineering [3]. “Most importantly, the FAO must recognise that biodiversity-rich farming and industry-led agriculture are worlds apart, and that industrial agriculture is one of the leading causes of the catastrophic decline in agricultural biodiversity that we have witnessed in recent decades. The FAO cannot hope to embrace biodiversity while holding industry’s hand”, he added.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

From GRAIN Shalini Bhutani in India [Tel: +91 11 243 15 168 (work) or +91 98 104 33 076 (cell)] or Alexis Vaughan in United Kingdom [Tel: +44 79 74 39 34 87 (mobile)]

From Focus on the Global South Herbert Docena in Philippines [Tel:+63 2 972 382 3804]

NOTES

[1] Visit http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=6. GRAIN and Focus’ report is entitled “Iraq’s new patent law: a declaration of war against farmers”. Against the grain is a series of short opinion pieces on recent trends and developments in the issues that GRAIN works on. This one has been produced collaboratively with Focus on the Global South.

[2] Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law of 2004, CPA Order No. 81, 26 April 2004, http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations/20040426_CPAORD_81_Patents_Law.pdf

[3] GRAIN, “FAO declares war on farmers, not hunger”, New from Grain, 16 June 2004, http://www.grain.org/front/?id=24

source: http://www.grain.org/nfg/?id=253 16oct04

However, this ends up cutting both was. For instance, to get through more applications, examiners often reject the first version of an application. This requires the applicant to make a stronger case for the invention, and often ends up “narrowing” the scope of the invention. For instance, the pie crust patent decision I linked to earlier involves a procedure to make flaky pie crust that was originally rejected. I’m pretty sure that the original technique wasn’t “novel,” so I think the rejection was a good one. The invention was narrowed to only apply to crusts that followed the original technique and were baked at a high temperature. This was enough to get a patent.

The rest of the decision is pretty funny, so if you haven’t read it, I really recommend you take a look. Anyhow, this kind of dance with the patent office ends up creating areas where the patent doesn’t apply. That’s nice. It’s one of the few bearable features of current patent law, but it’s a nice one.

I was thinking about your comments. One thing
that is not often said in the public is the
culture or mindset of public government, in
this case, the United States Patent and
Trademark Office.

I will not be surprised that the performance
evaluation of the patent examiners is heavily
tied to the number of patents that they approve.
If my feeling is correct, this may explain why
there are so many patents granted that should not
be granted at first place. The more patents they
approve, the better their performance evaluation
will look. Just imagine the consequence if they
reject too many patent applications more than they
approve. Therefore, the quality in patents is
heavily overshadowed by the quantity in patents.

I don’t have any direct evidence but I think that it
is plausible.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<[email protected]>

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions
in this comment in the public domain.

Is Myhrvold buying patents or the right to license patents. If this is an ASCAP/BMI type situation it wouldn’t scare me much. In fact, being able to license the rights to a whole sector of the technology industry for a flat rate might actually improve our chances.

Is Myhrvold is buying patents, we have a serious problem on our hands. He’s playing himself like a benevolent dictator. ‘Give me all the power so we don’t have to worry about all the bad people getting their hands on it.’ Yeah right. As soon as his interests diverge from the general public, we’ll feel it. And I’m not going to be explicit as to where we’re gonna feel it.

To quote Daniel Altman in Neoconomy:

“Academic economists have identified the ability to own the fruits of one’s labors as an important incentive behind innovation. In an unequal society, however, achieving that ownership becomes more difficult. Gathering up the materials and money to start a new venture is no easy thing for people who are poor to begin with, especially when many wealthier people are also in line. It’s much easier for them to sell their ideas to someone with the wherewithal to follow through-settling for a small up-front payoff in lieu of a long stream of profit. And when the rewards of creativity and innovation seem so far off as to be unreachable, what is the point of pursuing them? To the extent inequality demoralizes, it results in more wasted ability.”

I don’t think Mhyrvold is evil. He’s just far too invested in the model of one genius who solves all the worlds problem, instead of the far more likely (and academically supported) model that innovation comes from a huge number of people all working together and rebuilding eachother’s ideas. Great things come from great communities, not great men. (I say men because these fairy tales never seem to get beyond their token female innovator, Ms. Curie)

This firm will result in massive inefficiencies. Small inventors will be paid off long before they gain the full benefits of their creations. An even smaller group of companies, of which Intellectual Ventures is only one, will have all the capital to sink into new projects. Small inventors (either a person, school, or start-up company) need the full income of their inventions. 20+ years to finance more inventions. Buying them off quickly, and investors in small ventures will be sure to pressure for the quick payoff, cuts small companies out of the market. Collectively, less people will enter the field.

Furthermore, how will Mhyrvold react to competition? Can another venture compete with him fairly or is he going to leverage his IP against unwelcome newcomers. He’s from Microsoft, you do the math (and it ain’t string theory).

Myhrvold is a big dreamer. He ignores the social cost because he privileges his view of innovation over anyone else (particularly reality). His kurt salon of genius thinkers are going to guide the world for us, whether we like it or not. I’m getting a little tired of not being asked what I’d like technology to do for me.

Once someone decides that they’re heading for paradise, it becomes easier to justify the little bumps along the way. I’m not buying the dream, folks, and it doesn’t make me a bad person. I charge each one of you to rent, read, or go to the theater and watch ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brody’ by Jay Presson Allen. Trust me.

Rob (3L)