The Mid-Term Review (MTR) of the DGIS-funded project at the CGIAR Central Advisory Service on Intellectual Property (CAS-IP) is an internally commissioned and managed review originally designed to inform management of the project within CAS-IP and DGIS. However, it is taking place at a time of great change in the CGIAR and the international agricultural research-for-development community in general. Consequently, DGIS have requested that the MTR also focuses on the development of a robust set of recommendations for the development of effective IP management systems for the CGIAR and its partners in the future.

This is no small task and your input is very important!

The MTR, which is taking place during April – June 2010, will use multiple methods and sources of information to assess CAS-IP performance and recommend options for institutionalizing professional IP Management in the CGIAR and partner organizations.  The Summary Terms of Reference provides further information.

An e-survey and interviews will involve respondents from three groups of primary clients: the Centers of the CGIAR, the CGIAR system-wide initiatives and the CGIAR partners in low income countries. The review team is also eager to seek input from well informed opinions beyond the network of those usually asked to comment on changes in the CGIAR. Thus, the review team invites unsolicited feedback on CAS-IP from any stakeholder group who would like to submit their comments by emailing casip2010review@gmail.com. All comments sent to this address will remain confidential amongst the review team, and no direct attribution of comments will be made in the review report.

Alternatively, please feel free to initiate a dialogue on specific issues through this blog site.

We would be particularly grateful if you could take 15 minutes to complete the e-survey

English available at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/casip2010review

French (available soon)

Spanish (available soon)

photo by Peter Bloch (CAS-IP).

In the agricultural development context, commodities (e.g., oils such as sesame, tea, coffee, cacao) are typically produced in developing countries and exported to the west as raw or partially processed materials where they are processed and packaged for retail sale, branded and distributed. Most of the retail value of these products is added post-export; while the producers earn minimal wages and have no ownership in the final product, western importers can add substantial value and generate significant profits.

There are exceptions; one of the best known is the UK chocolate brand, Divine. Social investors in the UK set up the marketing company as a joint venture with a large Ghanaian cocoa farming cooperative and paid Fair Trade prices for cacao imports. The success of Divine has generated profits for the farmer cooperative which has made investments in education and healthcare that have benefited their farmer members. There are many other examples, and all are intended to share end-market profits with developing country producers. Arrangements such as this provide producers with an ownership in the brand. Other models, such as the trade marking of Ethiopian premium coffee varieties (Harrar, Sidamo and Yirgacheffe), were designed to provide producers with more equitable leverage in the marketplace through licensing agreements with western importers.

In addition to its IP expertise, CAS-IP has accumulated experience and knowledge which can be applied to effective market development, and over the past two years has been working with ICRISAT on brand-building exercises in both East and West Africa. The West Africa Seed Alliance (WASA) and the Malawi Seed Alliance (MASA) were both developed to stimulate the growth of the private seed sector and distribution chains for quality seed. In both cases ICRISAT and CAS shared a vision of creating brand identities that were synonymous with quality, reliability, trust and integrity. Marketing, advertising, promotion and branded content are some of the tools that corporations use to build, promote and maintain brand awareness and to create brand identities that drive sales. Development projects, however, typically do not have the resources to pursue this kind of top-down approach.

photo by Peter Bloch (CAS-IP).

1. Keep it simple
In West Africa we are promoting WASA (and not West Africa Seed Alliance) as the brand identifier. The word “WASA” can be spoken by constituents in our six country region with over a dozen languages. WASA, like Exxon and Sony, does not “mean” anything but is a word that people can “grab onto”. In Malawi, “masa” means “a good place to hang out” in Chichewa, the primary indigenous language.

2. No clutter
Branded development projects typically involve several partners - NGOs, donors and local/regional organizations - and communications (e.g., web sites, newsletters, press releases) often suffer from brand clutter and confusion. While partner organizations in both WASA and MASA are recognized, “top” level information (e.g., web site home pages, press releases) only display the primary brand logo.

3. Reputation is all
The focus here is on creating a sense of engagement at all levels of these operations. Both alliances seek to introduce new crops and new varieties to smallholder farmers (s/h), a group that is conservative and tends towards using farm-saved seed and seed traded with neighbors who they know and trust. If we are going to succeed we too have to build a reputation for trust from the ground up. This means that staff who are on the ground and are dealing with farming communities must take the time to engage and to understand the s/h concerns. Providing reliable and appropriate technical support, promoting new varieties though the use of demonstration plots and farmer field days (rather than aggressively “pushing”), and ensuring that seed they promote is high quality are all elements in this bottom-up process. Reports from West Africa suggest that this approach is now working, just as it did for the WARDA (now Africa Rice Center) name.

Download PDF

Authors: S. Derwisch, V. Henson-Apollonio
Year: 2008
Pages: 4
Language: English

Staff of the CGIAR Centers are committed to following ethical practices in the way they carry out
their research. This responsibility extends to awareness and respect of the rights associated with
traditional knowledge (TK) acquired from indigenous peoples and other partners for use by CGIAR
researchers. Many international treaties address the protection of indigenous peoples as regards their TK,
and the ongoing initiatives of WIPO and World Bank are devoted to raising awareness of the importance
of, and problems with, rights in TK. However, -the potential for loss and misappropriation of TK is still
seen to remain problematic.

The guidelines are based of the experience of CGIAR scientists regarding the use and
acquisition of TK and of research and policy groups in other organizations. They attempt to
provide practical recommendations to the CGIAR community incorporating best practices to ensure that
research involving the acquisition and use of TK will be carried out in an appropriate, ethical and
consistent manner throughout the CGIAR System. These guidelines will be reviewed by the Genetic
Resources Policy Committee (GRPC) and revised when necessary. We look forward to receiving feedback
that will assist us with these revisions. 

All the publications below are products of the CAS-IP project, the National Partners Initiative (NPI).  For more information visit the project page HERE.

2009 Case Studies

Pre-Commercialisation and Licensing of Modified Virgin Coconut Oil.
Authors: Guat Hong Teh, Intellectual Property Specialist.  CAS-IP, Malaysia.  Rafeah A. Rahman, Deputy Director.  MARDI, Malaysia. 
Click HERE to download a copy of the case study.

Learning from the licensing of a papaya variety developed by the public sector in Costa Rica.
Authors: Silvia Salazar & Luis Jiménez, University of Costa Rica – PROINNOVA.   José Falck Zepeda, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
Click HERE to download a copy of the case study.

Improving services on intellectual property rights and developing their forum for research innovations on forestry in Indonesia.
Authors: C Nugroho Sulistyo Priyono, Centre for Plantation Forest Research and Development (CPFRD) and Dede Rohadi Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).
Click HERE to download a copy of the case study.

Intellectual Property Management for Agriculture and Environment Research in Developing Country: Defining an Intellectual Property Policy for INERA (Burkina Faso).
Author: KABORE SAWADOGO Séraphine, Senior Scientist, INERA.
Click HERE to download a copy of the case study.

Intellectual Asset Management to make available virus resistant papaya to small-scale farmers in Peru.
Authors: Pamela Ferro                , Jorge Benavides & Marc Ghislain,  Estudio Grau Abogados INIA, Instituto Nacional de International Potato Innovación Agraria Center (CIP)
Click HERE to download a copy of the case study.

2008 Case Studies

Intellectual Property Management Regime in the Indian National Agricultural Research Systems.
Author: R.Kalpana Sastry, Principal Scientist.  NAARM, India.
Click HERE to download a copy of the case study.

Establishment of Plant Breeders’ Rights System In Tanzania: Achievements and Challenges
Author: Patrick Ngwediagi, Registrar of Plant Breeders’ Rights.  Ministry of Agriculture Food Security and Cooperatives, Tanzania
Click HERE to download a copy of the case study.

A Review of the Nigerian System of Intellectual Property
Authors: Victor M. Ibigbami and Christopher U. Orji, Intellectual Property Desk. NABDA, Nigeria.
Click HERE to download a copy of the case study. 

Establishing a Technology Transfer Office in a Developing Country Academic Institution: Experience of Moi University
Author: Antony S Mbayaki, Technology Transfer Manager. Moi University, Kenya.
Click HERE to download a copy of the case study. 

Miscellaneous publications

DRAFT:  A Snapshot Guide to Intellectual Property Systems: Compendium of Information from Developing
Countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America
Editors: Sudhir Kumar Soam, B. Hanumanth Rao and Victoria Henson-Apollonio.
Click HERE to download a copy of the IP compendium. 

Download PDF

Authors: G. H. Teh, S. Derwisch, V. Henson-Apollonio, P. Bloch
Year: 2009
Pages: 9
Language: English

In August 2009, the US Department of Justice (DoJ), together with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced a series of workshops intended to “explore competition and regulatory issues in the agriculture industry”. -  Agriculture and Antitrust Enforcement Issues in Our 21st Century Economy – will enquire into agriculture and into the dairy, poultry and livestock industries.  One of several workshops that has been scheduled will take place in Iowa and address “…seed technology, vertical integration, market transparency and buyer power”.

These hearings will ask if mergers and acquisitions have reduced competition in the US seed industry.  While this enquiry is US centric, CAS-IP, in its role to assist the CGIAR and its constituency of resource-poor farmers, argues that the availability of seed to poor farmers is critical to current and future food security.  This is no longer a national issue, and the food security of developing nations is of great concern to the US and to other developed nations.

Download PDF file

Authors: B. Kolpainsky, S. Derwisch
Year: 2009
Pages: 19
Language: English

Seed of improved varieties and other inputs are imperative to the transformation of the agricultural sector from subsistence farming to small-scale commercial agriculture in developing countries. This paper analyzes the adoption and diffusion process of improved seed by farmers in West Africa. The literature about farmers’ adoption of new agricultural technology is abundant, yet it gives no integrated, process-oriented policy perspective that helps designing effective strategies for fostering the adoption of improved seed in West Africa. This paper develops a system dynamics model that integrates the findings from existing studies into a coherent framework. The model analyses the behavior patterns that are generated by such structure. With this approach we are able to identify parameter constellations that cause observed behavior patterns for different crops in different countries or regions. On this basis we can derive policy implications for supporting adoption for commercial and food crops in West Africa.

Download PDF file

Authors: S. Derwisch, B. Kolpainsky, V. Henson-Apollonio
Year: 2009
Pages: 19
Language: English

The role of foreign direct investment and intellectual property rights in economic
development is discussed widely in the literature. However, an integrating framework is
missing to assess the role of FDI and IPR for agricultural development. This paper
establishes a framework to assess the role of FDI and IPR for seed sector development in
developing countries. The impact assessment is carried out with a System Dynamics model
that shows local capacity development to develop new seed varieties in the scenario of a
multinational company penetrating the market and spillovers occurring. Simulation runs
reveal the impact of IPR on the quantity technology transferred by multinational
companies and on spillovers. The development path of the local industry depends crucially
on the capacity of the local seed sector when the multinational company enters. A pattern
for seed sector development is derived.

CAS-IP has a number of other media available in the forms of movies, audio slideshows and photos.

CGIAR CAS-IP YouTube channel

Latest videos:

Watch more videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/CGIARCASIP

Photos from CAS-IP meetings, visits, workshops and seminars

Latest photos:

Visiting USPTO National Partners Initiative - Annual Meeting 2010 14-18 June 2010 Washington DC, USA Photo Credit: Shawn Landersz for CAS-IP	IMG_7912 National Partners Initiative - Annual Meeting 2010 14-18 June 2010 Washington DC, USA Photo Credit: Shawn Landersz for CAS-IP
Antony Mbayaki National Partners Initiative - Annual Meeting 2010 14-18 June 2010 Washington DC, USA Photo Credit: Shawn Landersz for CAS-IP	Kalpana & Marilyn National Partners Initiative - Annual Meeting 2010 14-18 June 2010 Washington DC, USA Photo Credit: Shawn Landersz for CAS-IP
NPI National Partners Initiative - Annual Meeting 2010 14-18 June 2010 Washington DC, USA Photo Credit: Shawn Landersz for CAS-IP	Seraphine Kabore National Partners Initiative - Annual Meeting 2010 14-18 June 2010 Washington DC, USA Photo Credit: Shawn Landersz for CAS-IP

View more photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/casip/

]]> http://www.cas-ip.org/resources/media/feed/ http://www.cas-ip.org/sitemap/ http://www.cas-ip.org/sitemap/#comments Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:56:44 +0000 karhuan http://www.cas-ip.org/?page_id=210

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• Yellow Beans and the Enola patent

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]]> http://www.cas-ip.org/sitemap/feed/ http://www.cas-ip.org/enola-bean-case-study/ http://www.cas-ip.org/enola-bean-case-study/#comments Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:06:23 +0000 tcaesar http://www.cas-ip.org/?page_id=42 Yellow Beans! CAS-IP celebrates CIAT’s success
On Wednesday 16th September 2009, a petition from POD-NERS for a panel rehearing on the “Enola” decision was denied. This case is now closed.

The International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), an  international agricultural research Center of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), has had a major victory in the US Courts, and the Central Advisory Service on Intellectual Property (CAS-IP) has been a supporting partner to CIAT in this long process.

CIAT has been breeding and distributing beans, (Phaseolus vulgaris), since 1972. Beans are the world’s most important food legume. They were domesticated more than 7000 years ago in Mesoamerica and the Andean region. Today, the common bean is the basis for not only Andean cuisine, but is the food staple for the world’s poor that supplies protein as well as carbohydrates.

Enter “IPRs” - intellectual property rights. On 15 November 1996, approximately two years after the first bought some beans in a Mexican market and planted them back in the US, Larry M. Proctor filed for patent protection. Protection not only over a yellow bean he claimed that he uniquely bred called “Enola” but also for “A field bean variety of Phaseolus vulgaris that produces seed having a seed coat that is yellow in color, wherein the yellow color is from about 7.5 Y 8.5/4 to about 7.5 Y 8.5/6 in the Munsell Book of Color when viewed in natural light.” US Patent No. 5,894,079, was granted to Proctor on 13 April 1999, and later assigned to POD-NERS, a small company Proctor started.

Over the next five years, on the basis of his patent rights, Proctor challenged other small seed companies in the U.S. and Mexican farmers that sold yellow beans to US consumers and farmers.

CIAT holds more than 27,000 samples of Phaseolus seeds, 260 of them yellow in colour, of which six accessions appear to the eye as substantially identical to ”Enola” and the beans described in the 8th claim of the POD-NERS’ patent. Requests for CIAT’s bean come in from all over the world, including the US. There were concerns at CIAT that the POD-NERs’ Enola patent would limit CIAT’s ability to freely distribute yellow beans. So, in 2000, CIAT filed a request for an ex parte reexamination of the Enola patent.

The re-examination process took seven years. The patent examiner rejected the claims of the original patent and new claims associated with the re-issue on several grounds. Then one year later, after going through this lengthy and technical process of re-examination and re-issue with subsequent amendment of the claims since 2003, an appeal to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) by Proctor ended up affirming the patent examiner’s decision to reject all claims.

POD-NERS then appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) and, on 10 July 2009, the decision of the Board was affirmed. The Court aligned with the rejection on the basis of obviousness when Enola was compared with another bean cultivar, Azufrado Peruno 87.

After 9 long years, the court has simply affirmed that the Enola bean wasn’t an invention at all. It was a bean derived from existing seeds, and could be produced with standard agricultural methods such as breeding and selection; something that farmers and breeders have been doing for centuries. These acts could and should not result in the monopolisation of genetic resources. The conclusion of the court that Enola was “obvious” was therefore unsurprising to most scientists and farmers.

Implications for the Future

What took most scientists by surprise was the time and effort that CIAT has had to expend in this case. Although CIAT was assisted by CAS-IP and received pro bono legal support from the Independent Senior Lawyer Project and Morrison & Foerster LLP, the time and incidental costs incurred by CIAT and the world community in this whole process were enormous.

From this experience, it is clear that information and research results produced by public organisations such as the CGIAR should be clearly and easily accessible to patent examiners. In the case of Enola, legal technicalities surrounding the concept of ‘prior art’ meant knowledge available on similar Phaseolus beans, outside the United States, was insufficient as statutory bars to patentability. Apparently the examiners at the USPTO had great difficulty finding printed material in their databases describing yellow beans during the patent application process. On re-examination however, a previous publication on some yellow beans served as ‘legal’ prior art in this case, and together with information on gene typing that was submitted by CIAT scientists it was possible to clearly show that these yellow beans and Enola were the same. This highlights the legal utility of making publications more widely accessible, and directly through the databases accessed by patent examiners.

The CGIAR Centers are taking steps to make our information easily accessible to patent examiners. One such step is working with patent offices such as the European Patent Office (EPO). Since 2005, CAS-IP and ICRISAT (one of the CGIAR Centres) have been involved in an initiative to put publications in front of patent examiners. Under a Memorandum of Understanding executed with the EPO, ICRISAT publications are periodically uploaded onto the EPO’s own Non-Patent Literature database. This is the in-house database that EPO examiners use. This ensures that prior art searches will immediately include research results and information published by ICRISAT scientists.  (see: http://casipblog.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/getting-the-word-in-defensive-publishing-in-the-cgiar/).

CIAT has now signed a similar memorandum with the EPO. CAS-IP is pressing forward to facilitate having other Centers and public agricultural institutes sign up to this program. In addition, CAS-IP is working with other patent offices such as the US Patent and Trademark Office, (USPTO), and ICRISAT is working with the Indian Patent Office to find additional means for easy ways to provide patent examiners with information.

Project Updates: The final chapter in the “Enola” case has closed Thursday, 17 September 2009, 2:14 pm Remember that intellectual property is a tool Wednesday, 19 August 2009, 4:51 pm No More Enola Patent! Monday, 13 July 2009, 3:32 pm Getting the word IN. Defensive publishing in the CGIAR Wednesday, 1 July 2009, 2:41 pm Enola bean patent – patent examiner’s decision. Good news – VERY good news! Monday, 5 May 2008, 3:15 pm

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