Iraq's New Patent Law:
A Declaration of War Against Farmers

References

by Focus on the Global South and GRAIN
Bangkok, Thailand & Barcelona, Spain

[1] Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law of 2004, CPA Order No. 81, 26 April 2004, http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations/20040426_CPAORD_81_Patents_Law.pdf

[2] The PVP provisions will be put into effect as soon as the Iraqi Minister of Agriculture passes the necessary executive orders of implementation in accordance with this law.

[3] UPOV stands for International Union for the Protection of New Plant Varieties. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland it is an intergovernmental organisation with 53 members, mostly industrialised countries. The UPOV Convention is a set of standards for the protection of plant varieties, mainly geared toward industrial agriculture and corporate interests. See http://www.upov.org.

[4] Chapter Threequarter Article 15 B: Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety mentioned.

[5] The World Trade Organisation, wherein the Iraqi Government has an observer status.

[6] http://www.grain.org/research/contamination.cfm?agenda

[7] GRAIN, "Confronting contamination: 5 reasons to reject co-existence", Seedling, April 2004, p 1. http://www.grain.org/ seedling/?id=280

[8] GRAIN, PVP in the South: caving in to UPOV, http://www.grain.org/ rights/?id=64

[9] GRAIN, Bilateral agreements imposing TRIPS-plus intellectual property rights on biodiversity in developing countries, http://www.grain.org/ rights/?id=68

[10] http://www.grain.org/ brl/?typeid=15

[11] http://www.bilaterals.org/ article.php3?id_article=387

[12] http://www.ustr.gov/Document_Library/Press_Releases/2004/September/
United_States_Afghanistan_Sign_Trade_Investment_Framework_Agreement.html

[13] http://www.dai.com

[14] The University's Agriculture Program "is a recognised world leader in using biotechnology" & the University works closely with the USDA Agriculture Research Service.

[15] http://www.sagric.com.au

[16] http://www.export.gov/iraq/market_ops/

[17] Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) system, with its 16 International Agricultural Research Centres (IARCs) of which ICARDA is one, holds the world's largest collections of plant genetic resources outside their natural habitat, which includes both farmers' varieties and improved varieties.

[18] In 2001 it was discovered that a US plant geneticist had obtained the seeds of the original strain of the famed Thai Jasmine rice, Khao Dok Mali (KDM) 105, from the Philippines-based CGIAR centre - International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). But no Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) signed in the process, despite international obligations on IRRI to enforce this.

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This article was originally published as part of a series "Against the Grain", a series of short opinion pieces on recent trends and developments in the areas of biodiversity management and control. "Against the Grain" is published by GRAIN on an irregular basis, and is available from their website: www.grain.org. Print copies can be requested from GRAIN, Girona 25, E-08010 Barcelona, Spain. Email: grain(at)grain.org. This particular "Against the GRAIN" was produced in collaboration with Focus on the Global South (www.focusweb.org; email: admin(at)focusweb.org).