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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>WHO CALLS THE
SHOTS AT UPOV? US GOVERNMENT AND MULTINATIONAL SEED INDUSTRY<BR>FORCE UPOV TO
ABANDON CRITIQUE<BR>OF TERMINATOR<BR>April 17, 2003<BR>ETC Group<BR>The full
text of this document is available on the ETC Group website:<BR></FONT><A
href="http://www.etcgroup.org/article.asp?newsid=393"><FONT
face="Times New Roman"
size=3>http://www.etcgroup.org/article.asp?newsid=393</FONT></A><BR><FONT
face="Times New Roman" size=3>After two days of intense diplomatic wrangling in
Geneva, US patent<BR>officials succeeded in turning the expert advice of an
intergovernmental<BR>secretariat critical of Terminator technology into little
more than a<BR>promotional paper for plant breeders' rights.<BR>On April 10-11,
US government representatives worked hard in Geneva to<BR>convince 51 other
countries that the expert advice of the Union for the<BR>Protection of New
Varieties of Plants (UPOV) is wrong and that UPOV is "not<BR>competent" to
comment on the possible intellectual property implications of<BR>Terminator
seeds. The paper in question, a memorandum prepared by UPOV's<BR>Secretariat at
the request of member governments of the UN Convention on<BR>Biological
Diversity (CBD), was presented to an Expert Panel convened by the<BR>CBD in
Montreal, February 19-21. The Expert Panel met to examine the<BR>implications of
Terminator seed technology for small farmers, indigenous<BR>peoples and local
communities. Although UPOV's paper was presented at the<BR>Montreal meeting, and
had been available on UPOV's web site since January,<BR>UPOV bowed to US
pressure and gutted the memorandum, replacing it with a<BR>sanitized and shorter
"position paper" that carries none of the criticisms<BR>of the original
report.<BR>In withdrawing its memo on GURTs, UPOV has allowed the US government,
owner<BR>of three patents on Terminator technology, to sanitize and erase
the<BR>intergovernmental organizations' perspective on an important policy
issue<BR>with direct relevance to plant intellectual property.<BR>UPOV's new
document is completely irrelevant because it fails to respond to<BR>the CBD's
request and offers no new information about the intellectual<BR>property
implications of Terminator. The withdrawal of the UPOV memo has<BR>also
confounded the work of the CBD's Expert Panel on GURTs that met in<BR>February
to consider the impact of Terminator on small farmers, indigenous<BR>people and
local communities.<BR>Terminating UPOV? The seedy squabble over Terminator
technology illustrates<BR>the bigger issue of UPOV's diminishing position in
today's rapidly changing<BR>intellectual property climate. On the one hand, the
Americans and Japanese<BR>continue to stretch the boundaries of conventional
patents to supersede and<BR>override UPOV-style plant variety protection. On the
other hand, new<BR>technologies such as Terminator threaten to make legal forms
of monopoly<BR>control over plant germplasm obsolete. Why bother with plant
variety<BR>protection when Terminator gives you timeless, limitless protection
without<BR>the need for lawyers and courts?<BR>The Bottom Line: UPOV has
succumbed to the strong-arm tactics of the US<BR>government and the
multinational seed industry, both of whom have vested<BR>financial interests in
Terminator technology. If member governments of UPOV<BR>had any doubts about who
determines policy within the Union, they need only<BR>examine the recent case of
Terminator.<BR>The original UPOV memo and the correspondence between UPOV and
the US<BR>government, as well as the ISF letter to UPOV, can be viewed
here:<BR>http://www.etcgroup.org/documents/USAvsUPOV.pdf<BR>For more information
please see, "Terminator Five Years Later," a new ETC<BR>Communique that provides
additional updates on Terminator, new patents, and<BR>more. The full text is
available on the ETC web
site:<BR>http://www.etcgroup.org/article.asp?newsid=389</FONT><BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>