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Patents
on life
A dangerous wave
of privatisation of all biological diversity is presently
taking place under the label of 'intellectual property rights',
i.e. patenting of plants, animals and individual parts of
DNA.
Patents are government
guarantees that provide an inventor with exclusive rights
to use, sell or manufacture an invention for a set period
of time. Patents are to be granted only on human inventions,
not on discoveries. Existing living organisms, like plants
and animals as well as their genes, are of course no-one's
invention and should therefore, by definition, never be patented
and put under private control.
However, over
the past decades patent claims on plants and animals as well
as genes and parts of human bodies have been continuosly extended
by industry and patent offices of industrialised countries.
By patenting life now the genetic engineering industry gains
control not only over its own genetically engineered organisms,
but also over our food chain and ultimately over the planet's
own genetic heritage for decades to come.
Patenting allows
industry to take control of and exploit organisms and genetic
material as exclusive private property that can be sold to
or withheld from farmers, breeders, scientists and doctors.
"Technology agreements" and fees on seeds deprive farmers
of their generations-old right to replant and exchange their
seeds. Vast, unsubstantiated patent claims on DNA deter scientists
from research in areas that have already been "claimed" by
big companies with large legal budgets. Patents on life create
Bio-Piracy and a new form of colonialism: In the South, where
most global food crops originate from, freely available
seeds and specimens are analysed by genetic engineering companies
and then patented to be sold back at high prices to those,
who originally maintained and developed these varieties over
generations.
Greenpeace opposes
all patents on genes, plants, humans and parts of the human
body and regards the biodiversity of this planet the common
heritage of humankind.
1.
Patents on life
2.
Broad species patents
3.
Biopiracy
4.
Fair Trade?
5.
Patents and the World Trade Organisation
6.
Animal patenting
7.
Human patenting
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