11.16.15
The EPO is Criticised Again for Serving the Monsanto (and Syngenta) Agenda
Some people might actually believe them…
Summary: The EPO’s selfish expansion of the scope of patents comes under fire, as it not only serves to proliferate toxins and carcinogens but also gives state-enforced monopolies on forms of life (and basic foods)
SEPARATION between law-making regarding patents and actual patent examination (and grants) is absolutely necessary because one branch should never be tempted to practically expand the law so as to give more power and money to itself. The EPO has make a mockery of this separation when it turned into a part-time lobbyist, as we have shown here over the past few months.
How does the EPO plan to artificially elevate the number of patents and pretend there is ‘business’ expansion or more ‘innovation’? Well, one obvious way is to broaden the scope pf patents, including for instance software patents and patents on life. We wrote a great deal here about Monsanto (and patents on life) several years ago, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] (we dedicated a whole series of articles to this subject), but now it’s the EPO that’s at the centre of this kind of controversy, not prominent supporters from bogus charities.
“Retarding innovation seems to be the goal now, in the interests of worldwide monopolies and oligopolies.”The EPO is nowadays monopolising everything for profit, irrespective of the impact of these monopolies on science and technology, not just in Europe but in the entire world. Facts-based analysis does not matter to the EPO. Retarding innovation seems to be the goal now, in the interests of worldwide monopolies and oligopolies.
As a lobbyists’ Web site (it often has lobbyists in there) put it, “European fruit and vegetables threatened by patent” and it “was quite a shock for plant breeders when the European Patent Office decided this spring to allow the patenting of natural plant properties. Since then, multinationals such as Syngenta and Monsanto have bought so many patents that we are on the brink of a dangerous monopoly of plant patents.”
This has also just been covered by IP Kat, which wrote:
The biggest problem created by the patenting of plant characteristics is that further innovation is blocked in the breeding sector [is there any evidence to support this assertion?]. The development of new plant varieties stops [does this mean that Monsanto, Syngenta and the other multinationals are no longer competing with one another]. After all, the holder of a patent has the exclusive right to a certain plant characteristic, so other breeders cannot use that property without permission and financial compensation [if that were the case, would we not have an instance of "essential facilities" with the European Commission already getting excited about this?]. This is a serious matter because by doing so, big companies are now pushing small businesses out of the market.
Surely we are going to hear a lot more about this in weeks or months to come. We welcome input on the subject, including related news links (we focus on software, so we often overlook news relating to this).
We are going to cover many more (and relatively new) EPO scandals in the week to come, so stay tuned and protect our right to free speech. There is actually a backlog of EPO articles, due to personal reasons (we’ll be away in Yorkshire with relatives this week).
Those who still don’t know what’s wrong with Monsanto can make a start by watching this informative video. █
“The antitrust litigation currently in the federal courts in the U.S. against Monsanto will be the test case in the life sciences, just as the Microsoft case was the test case in the information sciences.”
–Jeremy Rifkin
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