Bio-Patents

Bio Patents, or: Who owns the World? | Biopatente, oder: Wen gehört die Welt?

My plants, your plants – plants for everybody? You must be joking! Sure it may be well debatable if life should be claimable as property or rather not. However, when it comes to plants and their seeds, it seems like the answer is already given. The quality of seeds and breeds is decisive for harvest and gains – thus also for the market and trade value of whatever you grow in your gardens and on your acres. Consequently, the formula for a promising breed is in high demand. Not just since the first biological patents have been claimed. Yet – after being tested first in the reign of microorganisms – biological patents have made a stellar carreer in times of advanced bio-technologies, and lab genetics have finally directed the attention towards the “formulae of life”. With considerably severe consequences for every body involved…

Good reasons for Datscha-Radio to take a closer look at this field. Our guest in the winter garden studio: Vali Djordjevic von i.rights, who talks together with Diana McCarty and Verena Kuni about possible parallels, correspondences and notable differences between the current debates about bio-patents and about copyright, immaterial goods, and commons in the datasphere.

[Picture: Grown on communal ground, in this very case Rosenthal’s Hauptstrasse (main street). Hordeum. But which one? The location is usually the habitat for Hordeum murinum. However, what if it’s the edible grain that has migrated here from the fields nearby? – VK cc-by-nc-sa]

This post is also available in: German