with all attachments
-------- Weitergeleitete Nachricht --------
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