Protest: Too many patents on plants?

dozens of organizations today want to protest before the European patent office. The allegation: The authority is issuing more and more patents on conventionally bred plants - to the benefit of large corporations. Is that true?

By Susanne Wimmer, BR

First of all, it is generally a question of whether plants and animals that were conventionally grown - not, therefore, come from genetic engineering - at all patentable. In Germany, the Grand coalition has set out its attitude to it in the coalition agreement.

the CDU/CSU and the SPD to reject such patents. Even more importantly, In the European patent Convention, the basis of the European patent law, according to which the European patent office (EPO) works in Munich, it means: from the patentability of plant varieties or animal to be Excluded "breeds as well as Essentially biological processes for the breeding of plants or animals".

But already here it starts to be difficult. What Essentially biological processes "are"? Random mutations fall in the genetic material beneath them, or are already inventions that could fall under the patent protection? It is a grey area, my critics.

The Initiative "No patents on seeds" registered since a few years, a rising number of patent applications on plants, the genetic engineering process do not come from their point of view, but from conventional breeding. More than 1,600 of these applications were previously submitted and already around 220 patents by the EPO have been granted.

The fear is this: The seed and food production the case increasingly in the hands of a few major corporations can cash in by business interests, licenses, or access to breeding material block. In this way, ultimately, the basics of nutrition Monopoli could be magnetized. Especially, if the applicants major seed giants like Bayer, Syngenta or DowDuPont put.