Hi Christoph, all,

I had a meeting with Niels from Plantum last Tuesday and he indicated that he/Plantum is not interested to have a meeting with the Dutch ministry and us/NPOS at this moment. He did indicate that the patent discussion is fully back within the Dutch sector and they are, for example, well aware of the new position of the German breeders (and also the KWS patent). He considered that “we are back where we were 10 years ago” but pointed out that the big difference now is that the sector is much less aligned and that there exist many different positions (from fully against to in favour of patents -also with both small and big players on that side this time-, and several in-between positions (e.g. companies that argue that patents on products derived from random and targeted mutagenesis give them some ‘exchange material’ against those companies that hold the key process patents). Because of that situation, they cannot approach the Dutch ministry together with us at this moment. He also indicated that he (personally) doubted that necessary changes can be achieved through new interpretations of the existing legislation, being aware that legal changes will take a very long process and a lot of resistance from all kinds of industry sectors.

That was our discussion on this aspect in a nutshell.

Best regards,

Bram