International law to tackle gene giants

Biotechnology in agriculture has become a theatre of war in international law.

On the one side are the powerful, global companies that have dominated seed production since before gene technology. They are defending their investments in biotechnology research and their market position, using weapons like patent rights, "terminator" seeds (which cannot be resown in subsequent years) and the common practice of "leasing" seed to farmers on an annual basis.

On the other side are lobby groups, including farmers' groups and green activists, keen to see the multinationals regulated to prevent market domination and to ensure variety in the world grain stocks.

The generals in this war have conscripted the lawyers to the front and the first shots have been fired. Later this year, a multi-billion dollar anti-trust lawsuit will be instituted in up to 30 countries against the big grain producers, like Monsanto, DuPont and Novartis. The plaintiffs are Washington-based biotech activist Jeremy Rifkin, a coalition of US farmers and individual farmers from Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas.

In addition to the court battle, the issue is bound to be a major agenda item for the November meeting of the World Trade Organisation in Seattle.

According to Murdoch researchers Michael Blakeney and Fiona Macmillan, the interplay between intellectual property rights, corporation law and competition law is leaving regulators floundering in the wake of the big seed corporations.

Law professors Blakeney and Macmillan, directors of the Asia Pacific Intellectual Property Law Institute (APIPLI) located at Murdoch, have embarked on a major study looking at how these companies use the laws to bolster their market position.

While the underlying issues of market regulation and corporate laws apply to other areas of commerce, including those with multinational interests at work, Professor Macmillan says the fact that agriculture — the world's food supply — is the point at issue necessarily raises serious concerns for international public policy.

"We are looking at a solution to the problems of potential market domination in this field," she said.

A major area of the research will be how nation-based legal systems can respond to the international nature of the trade and the global system of patents.

A key factor in the concentration of the market into the hands of a few dominant biotechnology companies is the development of new seed varieties with enhanced yield capacities and disease resistance and the access of those companies to the genetic resources of developing countries. APIPLI has been commissioned by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations to audit the intellectual property resources of three gene banks in the Asia-Pacific region and to make recommendations on the management of those resources.