What is a patent?

Thomas Schweiger, Greenpeace European Unit - April 1999

A patent is essentially a contract between society as a whole and an inventor. The fundamental assumption is that an invention is basically something positive and value-adding for society - something society will profit from. In return for the (intellectual and financial) efforts the inventor has invested in creating this new thing, society grants the inventor exclusive rights for the invention - so-called "intellectual property rights" or IPRs. IPRs include trademarks and copyrights, but the strongest form of "intellectual protection" is the patent, a government grant that gives the inventor exclusive rights to use, sell or manufacture an invention for a set period of time, usually around 20 years. It must be stressed, however, that IPRs and patents are essentially Western concepts which do not exist in most other societies.

In order to be granted a patent under the European Patent Convention (EPC), operated by the EPO, the invention must fulfil some essential criteria, such as:

• be novel (or new)
• be inventive (not a discovery)
• be non-obvious
• have industrial application

Monopoly control is NOT granted to any item which is counter to public interest, including:

• animal and plant varieties
• inventions which are immoral
• medical techniques
• human beings

Until recently, patenting has only been applied to technical inventions and products which are manufactured. Now the genetic engineering industry wants to patent living animals, plants and even human cells, body parts and genes. Companies such as Monsanto also want to patent the genes they isolate from living organisms so that only they have the right to use them to make "new" life-forms. Pharmaceutical companies, like SmithKline Beecham, are trying to gain control over the human genome by patenting enormous quantities of newly discovered and isolated human genes, thus preventing unlimited access to our own genome.

In the United States, patenting of plants and animals has been allowed since 1985 and 1987 respectively, and industry "owns" the rights to numerous animals and plants for generations to come. Even the offspring of patented organisms belong to them for the period of the patent. Now they have also staked their claim to genes and cells from ethnic peoples. They have stored genes and cells taken from indigenous populations in gene banks for future use in any way they choose, and the people who are the real owners of these genes have no say in the matter.