Dear all,
Last week Wednesday, I sent the first 2 company responses that I received after providing all companies the Opportunity to Comment (OTC) through our email list. Apparently, this email was not well received so I try again now.
We have now received 3 responses, from Keygene, Rijk Zwaan and BASF. All three are attached. We have also been invited for a meeting with the director of Rijk Zwaan to discuss the issue in more detail once F2F meetings are possible again. In addition, I received a request from Bayer, Corteva and KWS to have some extra time to send their response due to the Eastern weekend. I have set Thursday 16 April as the final deadline so that I can forward all response to you on Friday this week.
KWS also asked for a phone call this week, and proposed either 2PM on Wednesday or on Thursday morning before 11AM. Please let me know in case you would like to join this call asap. In their email they write: "There seem to be several inaccuracies and omissions of information in the except provided, but further discussion would be needed to provide a satisfactory response. Moreover, the report clearly does not reflect the KWS position." I have indicated that we are, as part of this OTC, particularly interested to hear about the 'inaccuracies' they are referring to.
Altogether, I am surprised with the number of responses ( I had expected fewer responses). Some responses look interesting for us to use, i.e. Rijk Zwaan. In case we want to quote any part of a response received, we will need to inform the relevant company and ask for permission. I can do that quickly if needed. Keygene's response is also interesting but I am not sure whether we want to refer to it in any kind of way (they say they value 'open innovation', whereas we support 'open source'). Generally, it may be a good idea to indicate, e.g. in a footnote, that all patent applicants discussed in this report have been provided the Opportunity to Comment, and to mention the companies that made use of that opportunity. We can then add a small disclaimer that any mistakes in the text remain our own. I leave it the writing team to decide what information we want/need to incorporate in the report. Keygene for example mentions that ETH Zurich is co-inventor of their patent. I am not sure whether this would count as relevant (factual) information that we need to take into account.
Hope this overview is helpful, and that you will receive it this time. I will keep you informed about any other feedback I receive during the course of this week. Best regards,
Bram