Article: 680 of sgi.talk.ratical
From: (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe)
Subject: patenting of life forms - nature becoming evermore irrelevant
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1992 15:56:27 GMT
Lines: 89


  this post contains info about a joint u.s. senate/house bill that cud shift
  patent rights away from the "first to invent" to the "first to file."  more
  and more we travel into a reality where legalistic shell games re-enforce 
  the capital accumulators lust for acquisition and control of the world 
  around them and everyone/thing else in it including people's imaginations.
                                                           --ratitor


from m.a.p.:
Article: 5021 of misc.activism.progressive
From: hrcoord@igc.org (Human Rights Coordinator)
Subject: Loss of Patent Rights
Date: 2 Jun 92 19:45:13 GMT
Lines: 67

                   ALERT! CONGRESS THREATENS PATENT RIGHTS
                               Frieda Werden


   On April 30, there were joint US House & Senate hearings on a bill 
   referred to as "FIRST TO FILE/FIRST TO INVENT." In the House, it is 
   HR 4978. In the Senate, it's S 2605.

   I have not yet seen this bill, but according to an item on "BBC 
   Science Magazine," its thrust is to change U.S. patent law so that 
   the first to invent a patentable object or process will no longer 
   have any intellectual property rights - all the rights will belong to 
   the first to file the patent!

   The implications for small inventors, first of all, are horrendous. 
   Instead of having the snowball's chance in hell that you get when 
   you can sue a corporation for infringing your rights as the inventor, 
   the person who invents a process but doesn't have the money for 
   patent-lawyer knowhow will probably end up totally out in the cold.

   Supposedly, this is the way the law reads already in other countries 
   and the U.S. is just trying to get in step with international law... 
   Sure would save corporations a lot of hassle & lawyers' fees in 
   defending against frivolous - or valid - suits.

   But there's another more diabolical side to this bill.  Because the 
   U.S. is aggressively pushing other countries to agree to the PATENTING 
   OF LIFE FORMS (they have just become patentable in the U.S.) In fact, 
   the Bush administration's chief objection to signing the Biodiversity 
   Treaty being offered in Rio right now is (according to administration 
   apologist Bob Grady speaking on "Nightline" June 1):  "just the 
   regulation of biotechnology and the subversion of intellectual 
   property" contained in the treaty.  Grady says that for instance the 
   Merck company has just paid over a million dollars to Costa Rica for 
   the rights to do "chemical prospecting" in their rainforests, and "if 
   they can't have their intellectual property rights, they wouldn't do 
   it."

   As explained by Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva last November at 
   the World Women's Congress for a Healthy Planet, the right to patent 
   life forms would ignore the rights established by the pre-existing 
   work of peasant farmers who have cultivated plants to their present 
   forms.  So this "first to file" bill is probably intended to close the 
   door to all grassroots claims to compensation for their horticultural 
   work. (A few years ago I read about a farmer in Mexico who supposedly 
   had developed a strain of perennial corn, for instance - if a single 
   seed got into the hands of a U.S. corporation, it could be patented 
   and the farmer who developed it could even be prosecuted for 
   cultivating it without paying a royalty!)

   As I say, I haven't read the bill yet. I have a copy on order. It 
   should also be on file in all public libraries.

   I strongly advise everyone with any interest in inventing or in 
   indigenous people's rights to ASK YOUR CONGRESS PERSON FOR A COPY OF 
   THE BILL - THAT WILL LET THEM KNOW YOU'RE WATCHING THEM AND HAVE AN 
   INTEREST IN PROTECTING INVENTORS' PATENT RIGHTS.

   Then read it, and stand up for your/everyone's rights.

                Posted by Frieda Werden, June 2, 1992


--
                                             daveus rattus   

                                   yer friendly neighborhood ratman

                               KOYAANISQATSI

   ko.yaa.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language)  n.  1. crazy life.  2. life
       in turmoil.  3. life out of balance.  4. life disintegrating.  
         5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.