Some Recent Articles on Life Form Patents

From: GRAIN Los Banos <grain@baylink.mozcom.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003
BIO-IPR resource pointer
________________________________________________________

NEWS CLIPS

Judy Steed, "Seeds of conflict", Toronto Star, 10 November 2003. (Percy
Schmeiser vs. Monsanto reaches Canada's Supreme Court early next year. It's
a 21st Century case study of technology.)
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Artic
le_Type1&c=Article&cid=1068419407653&call_pageid=968350072197&col=9690488638
51

Megan Lindow, "Reaping New Meds From Old Cures", Wired News, 8 November
2003.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,61090,00.html?tw=wn_techhead_1

Kristy Hemmingsen, "Is your wheat legal?", Country World News, East Texas
Edition, 6 November 2003. (Syngenta is suing farmers for illegal sales under
the US Plant Variety Protection Act.)
http://www.countryworldnews.com/Editorial/ETX/2003/et1106wheat.htm

Tamar Kahn, "SA, India to strengthen ties", Business Day, Johannesburg, 22
October 2003. (South Africa is planning to sign a number of bilateral
agreements with India covering biotechnology, IT and safeguarding indigenous
knowledge.)
http://allafrica.com/stories/200310220324.html

Gonzalo Argandoña, "Working with local scientists 'could stem biopiracy'",
SciDev.Net, 22 October 2003.
http://www.scidev.net/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=readnews&itemid=1063&languag
e=1

Frank Senge Kolma, "PNG, Malaysia to enhance trade ties", The National,
Boroko, 27 October 2003. (Malaysia and Papua New Guinea plan to cooperate on
biotechnology and biodiversity in the context of their trade and investment
relations.)
http://www.thenational.com.pg/1027/nation3.htm

PAPERS & REPORTS

John King and Paul Heisey, "Ag Biotech Patents: Who is Doing What?", Amber
Waves, US Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, November
2003.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/November03/DataFeature/

IPR Helpdesk, "The EC Directive on the Legal Protection of Biotechnological
Inventions", briefing paper, European Commission, DG Enterprise, Alicante, 3
November 2003, 7 pp. (Provides an up-to-date and country by country "state
of play" regarding national implementation of the EU's life patenting
directive.) In German and in English.
http://www.ipr-helpdesk.org/controlador.jsp?seccion=documentos&cuerpo=cuerpo
SubsecFichaDoc&idFicha=0000001087&len=en

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, "OECD Science,
Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2003", OECD, Paris, October 2003. (Data
on indicators of the "knowledge-based economy" including biotechnology and
patenting.)
http://www.oecd.org/sti/scoreboard

The papers from the WIPO-UPOV Symposium on Intellectual Property Rights in
Plant Biotechnology organised by the World Intellectual Property
Organisation and the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties
of Plants, Geneva, 24 October 2003, are online.
http://www.upov.int/en/documents/Symposium2003/index1.htm

Rajeswari Kanniah, "TRIPS, farmers' rights and food security: the issues at
stake", Consumers International Regional Office Asia Pacific, Kuala Lumpur,
October 2003, 33 pp.
To request a copy, contact mailto:consint@ciroap.org

Graham Dutfield and Florian Leverve, "Bioprospecting and Intellectual
Property Protection", IPR Helpdesk, European Commission, DG Enterprise,
Alicante, no date but announced in October 2003, 29 pp.
http://www.ipr-helpdesk.org/controlador.jsp?seccion=documentos&cuerpo=cuerpo
SubsecFichaDoc&idFicha=0000002896&len=en

"Genetically Engineered Crop and Animal Farmer Protection Act of 2003", a
bill filed in the US House of Representatives (HR 2918) in July 2003 seeks
to limit the terms of contracts that seed companies selling genetically
modified crops impose on farmers. Would outlaw the corporate practice of
prohibiting farmers from saving seed from their harvest or charging them a
fee for it.
HTML: http://www.theorator.com/bills108/hr2918.html
PDF: http://www.thecampaign.org/HR2918.pdf

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