Is the Neem case at all similar?
Harvard professor Michael Sandel wonders if the neem story might have some bearing on patenting peanut-based foods for malnourished children. I asked Sandel about Nutriset after a talk he gave this evening at the Nieman Foundation.
At the turn of the 21st century, the European patent office revoked a patent it had granted on a fungicide derived from the neem tree, the source of many traditional agricultural products in India. In essence, the European patent office recognized that farmers had been using the seeds, oils and other parts of the neem tree for years to fight pests, blight and other agricultural problems. So the patent holders–in this case the US Department of Agriculture and W.R. Grace–were not entitled to the patent because they had not in fact created something novel.
Which brings up a few questions: Is there any previous history of using peanut butter mixes to fight starvation or treat malnourishment? If so, would that constitute what patent lawyers call “prior art”? And how many children would die of malnourishment before the challenge could finally be adjudicated? Related to that, how much money would have to be spent on the challenge and wouldn’t that money just be better spent buying the (patented) stuff and giving it to the kids?
The Is the Neem case at all similar? by Peanut Butter and Patents, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
