Excerpt from the summary: "To illustrate the severe consequences created by excessive seed patenting this report will describe the situation of farmers in the United States, where patents on seeds have been allowed for several decades. One can observe that in the United States a single company, Monsanto, has gained a dominant market position in genetically engineered (GE) seeds. In turn, the freedom to patent seeds combined with the high concentration of seed patents in one company has led to harmful results, such as the increase of seed prices and decrease of seed choices for farmers.
This report will also present the results of new, detailed research on patents in the field of conventional breeding. The patents researched for this report are either pending as applications or have been granted at the European Patent Office. The number of patent application in the field of conventional breeding has been steadily increasing for years."
