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July 2007 - Greenpeace challenges patent on sunflower

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Who owns sunflower and broccoli? European Patent Office is about to prepare a far reaching decision

Hamburg/ Munich, July 9, 2007. Greenpeace Germany filed opposition against a patent on a sunflower variety. The US company Pioneer received a patent (EP 1465 475 B1) on sunflowers derived from conventional breeding (without genetic engineering) in October 2006. The plants are resistant against a certain parasite in the soil which can damage the roots. Parallel to this new opposition procedure the European Patent Office (EPO, based in Munich, Germany) is preaparing a far reaching general decision on the issue of patents on normal plants and animals.

„The European Patent office has eroded systematicallly many legal borders of patentability in the last years," says Greenpeace expert Christoph Then. „It is an alarming signal that this office which is financed completely by fees from industry, will now even decide on this very fundamental issue."

June 2007 the EPO asked its highest legal institution, the so called Enlarged Board of Appeal, to take a decision to what extend essentially biological processes for the breeding of plants and animals are excluded from patentability. In the year 2000 the Enlarged Board already decided that genetically engineered plants can be subjected to patents. Since that hundreds of patents were granted in this field. In year 2002 the EPO granted a patent to a company in the Netherlands on „normal" brocoli (a vegetable) without genetic engineering. Against this patent several oppositions were filed by seed companies because patents on essentially biological processes for the breeding of plants and animals are not allowed according to European Patent law.

„If normal plants such as brocoli or sunflowers are declared to be inventions, in future nearly each and every plant or animal can be patented. The mulitnationals will then try to gain complete control on the whole chain of food production by actions from their patent attorneys," warns Greenpeace. „Even patent application such as from Monsanto on normal pigs then hardly can be prevented from being granted."

In the last months more than 30 farmers organisations worldwide have joined a coalition against patents on seeds (www.no-patents-on-seeds.org). These organisations will now mobilise public and politicians against patents on seeds and clear exclusion from patents on living beings in international patent laws.