Dear Christoph and Bram,

thanks a lot for your work! I just can follow, but I cannot help in any way.

The question of Bayer and the number of applications on conventional breeding: Christoph has also checked, I belive what he found! If you want I check at the weekend.

Ruth

Dear Bram

thanks for your support, your good work and final considerations.

I agree we can change the text with KWS and try to insert a similar language with Rijk. I also will try a way to insert the text from Rijk - I will check with Claudia from layout.

I would not list all applicants of the patent, but if wanted, I can try. It will require change in sentences and might create additional formatting problems - so this would not be my priority. It does not change the content. On Keygene I doubt we can find any informations about other patent applicants on the document. I am not sure if they wan us to include that Gates Foundation is involved (can not see them on the patent). I could try to insert a footnote. But this would need asking for permission.

on Bayer: Ruth may double check, but I think the patent applications on conventional breeding are water proof.

The other figures are not so relevant in this regard, because they are all based on official classifications. Not our problem, if they were wrong in some details.

On the media release, we are heading for Thursday next week (as proposed by FOE Germany). On the text of the PR it might become chaotic if there are too many ideas. Please restrict yourself to what is really necessary.

have a nice weekend!

Christoph

Am 17.04.20 um 14:05 schrieb Bram de Jonge:

Dear All,

 

Now we have received all pending company responses, we can draw some interesting conclusions:

 

Overall, none of the companies has disputed the report's main findings or conclusions such as impact of patents on monopolization in the sector or the use of technical toppings to render products of conventional breeding patentable. I think that is a good result. Obviously, some companies (especially BASF, Corteva, Bayer) have taken an effort to explain why they think that patents are necessary, but at the same time, all of them have tried to defend themselves by describing the initiatives they take for increased transparency and accessibility. Also a good sign I think, and none of these points we need to consider for the report.

 

What we may need to consider is our presentation of those companies that seem to support the general message of the report. Rijk Zwaan is very clear on this and provides some good quotes for us to use, of which we have now incorporated one. I just received their response: they approve but made some revisions, see text in blu attached.

KWS also seems to agree with (part of) our position so it may be good to be a bit less strong in our language as these are potential collaborators in the future. I therefore propose the below suggestions (in capitals) to the following original sentence: "This example illustrates the systematic way in which the company exploited the legal loopholes in the 2017 Administrative Council decision, which left random mutations open to patentability as inventions." à DESPITE KWS CRITICAL RESPONSE TO the 2017 Administrative Council decision,[FOOTNOTE TO LINK PROVIDED BY KWS], THE ABOVE PATENT APPLICATION EXPLOITS THE SAME LEGAL LOOPHOLE THAT DECISION CREATED, which left random mutations open to patentability as inventions.

 

Regarding the factual correctness - the key purpose of the opportunity to comment procedure, we got the response from Corteva that we have addressed by deleting reference to that company under the pepper patent. In addition, several companies (Keygene, KWS) have indicated that they are not the sole-applicant of the patent discussed in the report. This is not a mistake but it is an omission that we can probably easy correct by including the names of the respective co-applicants.

A final, small 'correction' that we have received is from Bayer, indicating that it "believes that the actual number of patent applications filed by Monsanto/Seminis in 2018 and 2019 with claims directed to native traits is significantly lower than indicated with less than 10 patent applications filed". I assume we are very sure of the numbers presented in the report so I do not see a reason to change our numbers, or to refer in the report to this statement of what Bayer 'believes' to be the case.

 

Happy to discuss the above with you via email or phone.

Oxfam will reply to all responses received, and I will keep you informed about any follow-up that we may receive in that process.

Best regards,

 

Bram

 

 

Bram de Jonge | Seed Policy Advisor

Sowing Diversity=Harvesting Security (SD=HS) Program

Oxfam Novib | The Hague, The Netherlands | +31 (0)70 342 1 717

skype: BramDeJonge | http://www.sdhsprogram.org/

 

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