The development is of special concern to India because farm exports from the country, as also from other developing countries, to Europe would be at stake, as such a measure may lead to patenting of a large number of crops. Trade disputes may, therefore, become inevitable, according to experts.

The immediate reaction to the EPO’s plan to grant general patent rights to conventional crops has been the collective protest by farmers from India, Europe and Latin America, who have gathered in Munich, where the EPO is based. The Indian farmers are represented by the Bharat Krishak Samaj.

In a telephonic conversation from Munich, the executive chairman of the Bharat Krishak Samaj, Krishan Bir Chaudhary, said, “We will fight for our sovereign rights over seeds and farm animals. We cannot afford to lose our rights to MNCs. We know the strategy of MNCs like Monsanto, which sued Canadian farmer Percy Schmieser for ownership of his conventional canola seeds, after having his field contaminated by pollen from the nearby genetically modified (GM) canola fields.”

The EPO’s decision to accord such patent rights flows from the ruling of the EBA, which is also to decide on the validity of a patent on broccoli (EP 1069819 B1) this year. Since 1980, the EPO has granted patent rights to over 151 GM crops from the 285 applications it received. It has now on its agenda the grant of patent rights to conventionally bred seeds and animals.

The farmers have been joined by NGOs like Greenpeace, Misereor, Swissaid, The Declaration of Berne and No Patents on Life, and have issued a global appeal against the EPO’s decision. On April 28, the EPO rejected an application for a patent on sunflowers derived from normal breeding (EP1185161), which was filed by Greenpeace. “We will file another appeal against the EPO decision, as according to the European Patent Convention, conventional plants cannot be patented, only GM crops can be,” said Christoph Then of Greenpeace.

While patent claims have been made for soybean, the most threatening example is of Syngenta, which has claimed patent rights over a large sequences of rice genomes and is also extending its rights over genomic information of other crops. The EPO has already granted a patent right to a Dutch company, Rijk Zwaan, on aphid-resistant plant composites (lettuce), and is slated to decide on patent rights for a method of increasing a specific compound in Brassica species. Monsanto too has claimed patent rights over pig breeding process.

With such broad patents likely to be granted, Indian farmers’ groups feel it may jeopardise the country’s trade interest as well as farmers’ sovereignity over seeds.