Hi Peter >Hi Keith ; > >Great detective work thanks. Outlawing patents on living organisms >need not be difficult or painful for corporations. Let's say the >Patent Office says that 3 years from now, the law will be effective. >What would happen? > >Well, you could expect a rush of patent applications for life forms >as the 3 year deadline comes to a close, as corporations try to get >their patents approved before the window of opportunity closes. >After that, no more patent applications. And since patents expire >in 17 or 20 years anyway, all the previous patents which were >granted would expire eventually. > >Problem solved. The only obstacle is our resolve to compel CONgress to act.
Not only Congress, it's a global issue, WIPO et al. The World Trade Organisation's "Monsanto Agreement" won't help much - aka TRIPs, the WTO Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights, which among other things effectively removes the farmers' age-old right to save their own seeds and breed their own crop varieties. The TRIPs agreement was drafted by a coalition of 13 US transnational corporations, led by Monsanto, DuPont and Pfizer, and written by PhRMA, the American pharmaceutical corporations' lobbying group. It's not so much patenting as the enabling of theft, far too often - theft for starters, along with the rest of the calamity. The corporations, having more or less wrecked patenting and IP and so on, want to abandon patents because it doesn't give them enough control - they're after something much worse. (Hence Terminator seed technology, eg.) I don't think your reasoned approach will appeal to them much. But that's no reason to give up on it, quite the opposite, strength to yer arm. All best Keith >Best Regards, > >Peter G. >Thailand >.org/ _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
