Briefings

A Case Study in the Public Sector's Mismanagement of Intellectual Property

Sunday 29th October 2000

In May 2000 millions of dollars and 10 years worth of publicly funded research on Golden Rice was "donated" to multinational Gene Giant, AstraZeneca (now Syngenta). The takeover of Golden Rice by AstraZeneca is a case study in the public sector's failure to address and understand patent issues.

Captain Hook, the Cattle Rustlers, and the Plant Privateers: Biopiracy of Marine, Plant, and Livestock Continues

Wednesday 31st May 2000

Biopiracies are on the increase and governments are doing nothing useful about it. These cases demonstrate the power of exclusive monopoly patents to disrupt and distort domestic and international markets for Southern farmers, and to appropriate the innovative genius of indigenous peoples and rural societies.

Human Genetic Diversity Enters the Commercial Mainstream

Monday 31st January 2000

With computer-assisted DNA sequencing machines running faster and more cheaply, researchers are now entering Phase II of human genome research. Companies are patenting and privatizing the commercially-important bits of variation found in individuals, indigenous peoples, disease and disability groups, and ethnically-distinct communities.

Monsanto terminates itself. No surprises in No-Name $27 billion merger.

Monday 20th December 1999

Monsanto announces that it will merge with Pharmacia-Upjohn and 'spin-off' its agricultural activities. The move heralds pharmaceutical industry strategy to distance itself from GM food flop. Monsanto also announced that it would drop its ill-fated bid to acquire Delta & Pine Land, the largest cotton seed company and co-owner of the prototype Terminator patent.

The Impact of Intellectual Property Rights on Sustainable Food Security and Farm Families Remains to be Felt

Saturday 29th May 1999

Examines the controversy over the intellectual property provisions of the WTO with special emphasis on the acrimonious debate underway in Africa. To date no one has been able to give a clear answer to what the benefits of the system are for poor farmers and for food security.

Update on Consolidation in the Life Industry

Wednesday 31st March 1999

Corporate "Gene Giants" are expanding market share over agribusiness, food and pharmacy. Market dominance combined with monopoly patents gives the Gene Giants unprecedented control over the products and processes of life - the biological basis for commercial food, farming and health.

The Terminator's Wider Implications

Sunday 31st January 1999

RAFI examines the broader implications of Terminator and Traitor technologies. Traitor Tech refers to a new array of patents describing the control of a plant's genetic traits by the application of an external chemical catalyst. Farmers are becoming trapped in a pattern of biological controls that inevitably lead to bioserfdom.

Monday 14th December 1998

The Novartis patents comprise a wide-ranging and inter-related group directed toward controlled expression of desired traits in plants, these resulting from introduction of DNA constructs. While a principal focus of the work is to regulate gene expression by exposure of the plant to chemicals that can activate the promoter regions of introduced genes, the work also includes constructs that confer the constitutive expression (i.e. maintained in the absence of external stimulus) of introduced traits. In addition, considerable effort has been devoted to isolating the gene products which are produced as a stress response by the plants. Isolation of the genes that code for these proteins, and of the promoter sequences which regulate their expression, provide the basis for much of the work. Several of the claims are methodological, defining ways of isolating desired genes and the promoters that control them, but essentially they are variants of themes already well-developed in biotechnology. Similarly, while there is considerable space given in the discussion to the methods of transforming the plants through introduction of DNA sequences, the approaches used are standard for the industry and not relevant to understanding the result.

RAFI's Seed Industry Consolidation Chart

Friday 31st July 1998

The first half of 1998 witnessed a dramatic consolidation of power over plant genetics worldwide. The global seed trade is dominated by life industry giants whose vast economic power over plant germplasm has effectively marginalized the role of public sector plant breeding and research.

New Genetic Technology Aims to Prevent Farmers from Saving Seed

Tuesday 31st March 1998

RAFI's first publication alerting the world to Terminator technology - published just weeks after RAFI discovered the patent. On March 3, 1998 the US Department of Agriculture and an American cotton seed company, Delta & Pine Land Co., received a US patent on a technique that genetically alters seed so that it will not germinate if re-planted a second time. It is a global threat the farmers, biodiversity and food security.

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