Hello All: I thought this would interest many of you, especially those working in the area of intellectual property rights, geneteic engineering, and/or globalisation. It also follows up on some of the comments Vandana Shiva made at the Melbourne Conference on Environmental Justice this October. Stefanie Rixecker ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 14:01:50 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Neem Patent: Favourable Interim judgement delivered From: Vandana Shiva <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> PRESS RELEASE (13/10/97) FAVOURABLE INTERIM JUDGEMENT DELIVERED ON OPPOSITION TO NEEM PATENT On the 30th September 1997, the European Patent Office (EPO) delivered a favourable interim judgement on the challenge of a European patent on the fungicidal effects of neem oil (Patent No. 436 257 B1) owned by W. R. Grace & Co, by Dr Vandana Shiva (Direc tor of the Research Foundation), Ms Magda Alvoet (leader of the Green MPs of the European Parliament) and other NGOs of the Neem Campaign. For India, this optimistic development comes close on the heels of the repeal of the Turmeric patent (No. 5 401 504) on 23rd August 1997, after the US Patent Office found the claim to novelty to be false. The Opposition Division of the EPO has issued a provisional statement of nine pages in the instant case, whose summary runs as follows: "3.7 In summary, it appears that the present patent cannot be maintained in view of the affidavit A2 (Articles 54 and 56 EPC). Moreover, the content of the affidavits A3 and A4 could possibly form a very relevant prior art with regard to the inventive st ep." The Opposition Division has asked the applicants for more detailed information concerning the extraction process in order to proceed to the next stage. The Neem Campaign consisting of a group of NGOs and individuals, was initiated in 1993 in India to mobilise worldwide support to protect indigenous knowledge systems and resources of the Third World from piracy by the West, particularly in light of emergi ng threats from intellectual property rights regimes under WTO and TRIPS. The Neem patent became the first case to challenge European and US patents on grounds of biopiracy. The revoking of the turmeric patent in the US and now the consideration for revocation of the neem patent on grounds of 'prior art' in the European Patent Office demonstrates the imperative need for Europe and the US to revoke all patents based on indigen ous knowledge and "prior art". In addition, the US also needs to change its patent laws which allow biopiracy by non-recognition of foreign prior art. Patents are supposed to satisfy three criteria - of novelty, non-obviousness and utility. Novelty implies that the innovation must be n ew. It cannot be part of 'prior art' or existing knowledge. Non-obviousness implies that someone familiar in the art should not be able to achieve the same step. Most patents based on indigenous knowledge appropriation violate the criteria of novelty comb ined with non-obviousness because they range from direct piracy to minor tinkering which involves obvious steps to anyone trained in the techniques and disciplines involved. Using the turmeric and neem case, India needs to challenge the WTO ruling in the TRIPs dispute initiated by the US. The Ruling states that India has "failed to implement a mechanism for preserving novelty and priority". However, when 'novelty' itself is under question as in the case of turmeric, neem and countless other cases of biopiracy, 'preserving novelty' by introducing US like patent laws in India amounts to perpetuating Biopiracy. There are strong grounds for challenging the WTO decision. India sh ould not let this opportunity pass. --------------------- ************************************ Dr. Stefanie S. Rixecker Department of Resource Management Lincoln University, Canterbury PO Box 56 Aotearoa New Zealand E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fax: 64-03-325-3841 ************************************
