8 things you should know about patents on life: Dinyar Godrej gives the lowdown on some underhand activities - Keynote - Column

The most coherent position has been of various groups of indigenous people who have argued that the natural world belongs to us all, that their knowledge of it is collective and cannot be privately owned, that though they ask for compensation from those who wish to access their resources for profit, they remain steadfastly opposed to patenting. Recently a $2.5 million bioprospecting project of the US government exploring Maya medicinal plants had to be abandoned after stiff opposition from the people of Chiapas, Mexico.

A wide range of civil society organizations are taking their vision of a patents-on-life-free future to the Rio+10 environment conference in Johannesburg this month in the form of a 'Treaty to Share the Genetic Commons'.

Until recently the groundswell of public opposition has focused on GM technologies rather than the patenting aspect which is at their heart and goes much further. What a glorious opposition it has been, uniting people of all political persuasions to stand firm against charges, of philistinism and foolishness levelled at them by vested interests. The same public effort now needs to inform the No Patents on Life campaigns. It may be an old-fashioned idea, but life is meaningless unless it is shared.

PS In 1421 Filippo Brunelleschi refused to reveal a vessel he'd invented unless the city of Florence granted him a patent on it. Although this went against the usual practice of openly sharing innovations, the authorities gave in. The Badalone was unveiled...and sank on its first trip on Lake Arno. Florence didn't issue another patent for a long time. Technological progress continued regardless. (11)

(1.) Vandana Shiva, Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (Green Books, 1998).

(2.) John Suiston and Georgina Ferry, The Common Thread (Bantam Press 2002).

(3.) ISIS-TWN report February 2001 'Why Biotech Patents are Patently Absurd' by Mae-Wan Ho, available from www.i-sis.org.uk/

(4.) Various ETC group sources, www.etcgroup.org

(5.) Luke Anderson, Genetic Engineering, Food and Our Environment (Green Books 1999).

(6.) GRAIN and SANFEC, 'TRIPS-plus Through the Back Door', www.grain.org/publications/trips-plus-press-en.cfm

(7.) GRAIN, 'WIPO Moves Towards "World" Patent System', July 2002, www.grain.org

(8.) 'Privatising our genes?' 17 May 2001, www.opendemocracy.net

(9.) 'Copyright and science: gridlocking knowledge?' 24 June 2002, www.opendemocracy.net

(10.) 'Kill and cure' New Scientist 17 November 2001.

(11.) Ikechi Mgbeoji, 'Patents and Traditional Knowledge of the Uses of Plants' Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies September 2002.

RELATED ARTICLE: Glossary

biodiversity -- refers to the enormous variety of the natural world

biotech -- cellular or molecular methods used to develop products

cell line -- cells derived from one individual cell which are supposedly genetically uniform or identical

clone -- an identical copy of a cell or a complete organism

DNA -- cell molecule that carries genetic information and inherited characteristics