The American Administrator of the Iraqi CPA (Coalition Provisional
Authority) government, Paul Bremer, updated Iraq's intellectual property law
to 'meet current internationally-recognized standards of protection.' The
updated law makes saving seeds for next year's harvest, practiced by 97% of
Iraqi farmers in 2002, the standard farming practice for thousands of years
across human civilizations, newly illegal. Instead, farmers will have to
obtain a yearly license for genetically modified seeds from American
corporations. These GM seeds have typically been modified from IP developed
over thousands of generations by indigenous farmers like the Iraqis, shared
freely like agricultural 'open source.' Other IP provisions for technology
in the law further integrate Iraq into the American IP economy.
Links:
http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations/20040426_CPAORD_81_Patents_Law.pdf
http://www.vegsource.com/articles2/iraq_seeds.htm
http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=6
How this can do anything but harm to the Iraqi people is beyond me...
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