HomeNewsEditorials Protecting Intellectual Property – May The Force Be With Us
Protecting Intellectual Property – May The Force Be With Us
Posted by Dean Kleckner
The new Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith, earned untold millions in its opening days--and only a few hours after the curtains rose, illegal copies of the film were already circulating on the Internet.
You could shrug your shoulders and say, “Sith happens.”
Then again, there’s much more at stake here than the size of George Lucas’s big bank account. American farmers have a direct interest in making sure that everybody’s intellectual property rights are protected, and that high-tech thievery doesn’t have a future.
In the United States, farmers make use of other people’s intellectual property every day - we pay special fees to plant biotech seeds. The prices aren’t cheap, but those of us who choose to use them have decided they are worth it because biotech crops lead to reduced pesticide costs and higher yields. That’s why virtually all the soybeans grown in this country, as well as most of the cotton and about half the corn, are biotech enhanced.
It would be great if these seeds were free, or if they weren’t sold at a premium. But the reason they exist at all is because seed companies have invested tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars into research and development. If they aren’t able to recoup these expenses in the marketplace, they’ll withdraw the existing technologies and quit making new ones. That would help nobody.
Unfortunately, some countries are trying to exploit American ingenuity--they want to plant biotech seeds and take advantage of everything they have to offer, but they don’t want to pay for it the same way U.S. farmers do.
You could say they’ve gone over to the dark side.
The biggest problem is Argentina, a major exporter of soybeans. Argentine farmers will grow perhaps 39 million tons of it this year, and something like 95 percent of their harvest will be genetically improved. But few will pay the technology fees that routinely apply in the United States, because the seeds are commonly acquired on the black market.
They’re able to get away with this practice, at least for now, because Argentina does not have strong legal protections for patents, trademarks, and copyrights. This failure to guarantee intellectual property rights is one of the main barriers to developing countries becoming fully integrated into the global economy.
The good news for American farmers is that many growers in other nations understand the basic problem. They’re grateful for the ways in which biotechnology improves agricultural practices and they’re typically willing to pay their fair share for it. Farmers in Paraguay, which borders Argentina, recently agreed to pay royalties on biotech seeds.
“This is very positive for the country and for producers,” said Cesar Jure of the Paraguayan Grain and Oilseed Exporters Chamber upon striking the deal in March. “After years of underground seed trade, we had reached a point of such disorder that we didn’t even know what we were planting. Now we’ll have seeds that are designed for different planting situations.”
There has also been substantial progress on this issue in Brazil, another one of Argentina’s neighbors and a substantial producer of soybeans.
Negotiations to correct the problem have been underway in Argentina, but they recently took a turn for the worse because their government seems determined to get something for nothing for as long as possible. When Monsanto announced that it will try to collect royalties on its soybean patents by working with countries that both import Argentine soybeans and recognize intellectual property rights, the government in Buenos Aires threw a fit. The agriculture secretary even accused Monsanto of holding a “hoodlum-like attitude.”
These hotheaded words need to be taken with a grain of salt. They come from the same socialist government that recently called for a consumer boycott of Shell gas stations because fuel prices are going up. Can you imagine the outrage if President Bush were to attempt such a thing in the United States? In Argentina, however, this is politics as usual.
There’s still time to craft a sensible solution in Argentina. But this is an issue that won’t vanish the way Obi Wan Kenobe did when Darth Vader smacked him with a light saber--especially as China and India increasingly adopt biotechnology on their own farms.
Much wrangling lies ahead. As we confront it, may the force be with us.
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The new Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith, earned untold millions in its opening days--and only a few hours after the curtains rose, illegal copies of the film were already circulating on the Internet.
