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.