piracy by patents; the case of the neem tree vandana shiva and radha holla-bhar

12

PIRACY BY PATENT

The Case of the Neem Tree

Vandana Shiva and Radha Holla-Bhar

Vandana Shiva is a physicist and philosopher of science. She is also an indefati-gable activist] having played a key role in the famous Chipko movement to savethe Himalayan forests. She is now director of the Research Foundation for Sci-

ence, Technology and Natural Resource Policy in Dehradun] India] and is thescience and environment adviser of the Third World Network. Her books in-

clude MonOC:ulture of the Mind (1993)] Biotechnology and the Environ-ment ( 1993)] and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development

( 1989). In 1993] Shiva was awarded the Right Livelihood Award.Radha Holla-Bhar is a researcher at the Research Foundation for Science,

Technology and Natural Resource Policy. One of the many campaigns of this

institute is to oppose patenting of life forms] particularly the wild plants andcrops to which rural people of India have always had free access and that may

now only be available to those who can afford to pay royalties to such compa-

nies as Cargill and ~ R. Grace.

U NTIL VERY recently in India, biodiversity was something held en-tirely in common by local communities of people. Resources and

knowledge about forest or agricultural properties were freely shared.

Whether it was seeds of the farm or plants of the forest, all were clearlyunderstood to be part of the cultural, spiritual, and biological commons.

The idea that the commons could be divided up, purchased, and

owned by individuals or companies for their own commercial purposeswas unknown to Indian farmers until the early 19605, when certain inter-

Piracy by Patent: The Case of the Neem Tree 147

national conventions established "plant breeder's rights." These new

"rights" allowed commercial plant breeders to take traditional indigenousvarieties of seed, for example, "improve" them (often by very minor alter-

ations of genetic structure), and then patent and commercialize them,

eventually selling back the patented seeds to the communities that firstprovided them freely.

The new rules were based on the new idea that biodiversity, by now

existing mainly in the countries of the South, should be the "common her-itage" of all humanity. This globalization of the South's biodiversity com-

mons was a windfall for northern corporations, which began a race to

patent and privatize as much of this natural commons as possible, withoutever paying royalties to the original breeders and farmers -the local com-

munities and indigenous people- who gathered all the knowledge aboutthem. By the 197°s, strong protests were developing.

As G. S. Nijar and Chee Yoke Ling wrote in Third World Resurgence

(January 1992), "Developing countries objected to the inherent unfairnessin having to give their genetic resource materials freely when these were

being used for developing biological materials which were then subject to

property rights. The common heritage of mankind, taken freely from theSouth, was now returned as a commodity at a price."

However, the industrialized northern countries argued that the tech-

nologically altered materials were not part of the common heritage ofhu-

mankind, thus creating a huge double standard. They argued that the

materials, created and developed from generations of innovation in theSouth by farmers, were common heritage, thus allowing northern corpo-

rations free access, but the benefits derived from this common heritagewere corporate property and should be protected by patent.

The issue came to cris~s during the GATT negotiations, when theUnited States and other northern countries imposed their new rules of

Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which forced allcountries to honor the northern interpretation of patent rights. 'The north-ern countries argued that when southern farmers' attempted to retain freeuse of their own seeds, developed by them over thousands of years, it wasa form of piracy, but the pirate's hat clearly belongs on the other head.

For example, the United States argues that its corporations lose $202

million a year in royalty payments for agricultural chemicals and $2.5billion in pharmaceuticals from Third World countries such as Indiathat have not recognized patents for intellectual property. But an analysis

by the Rural Advancement Fund International (RAFI) of Canada hasshown that if the long history of plant-breeding work of indigenous

148 VAND.NA SHIVA AND RADHA HOLLA-BHAR

Third World farmers over thousands of years were properly taken intoaccount, along with the discovery and care of plants with pharmaceuticalproperties, the piracy accusation would be sharply reversed. The United

States would rightfully owe the Third World's farmers S3O2 million an-nually for royalties on farmers' seeds that the United States now uses and$5.1 billion for pharmaceuticals now in U.S. drug stores.

Indian farmers understand the issue exquisitely well. They staged re-

peated mass demonstrations against the GATT Uruguay Round agree-ment. In 1993, about a half-million farmers converged upon Bangalore to

voice their fears about the GATT legislation, fully aware of the directthreat that it posed to their livelihoods.

In particular, many of them began to understand that the new GATT

institutionalizes the international "harmonization" of property rights leg-

islation and global monopoly ownership of life forms along the lines of

U.S. law.

Before GATT, Indian law excluded the private ownership of patentrights and biological materials. This helped ensure that entitlements to

food and nutrition remained as broad-based as possible. But with GATT,there is tremendous pressur~ to change. The inclusion of these living re-sources in frameworks of private ownership of patents will threaten our

rights to survival as a country and as a people. Sovereignty in the matter ofpatent law is essential because it is a matter of survival, especially for the

economically weaker sections of our society that have no purchasingpower and can be protected only through the public interest.

THEFT OF THE NEEM TREE

As part of their demonstration, thousands of the protesting Indian farm-

ers carried twigs or branches cut from the neem tree, abundantly foundthroughout the drier areas of India.

Of all the plants that have proved useful to humanity, a few are distin-

guished by astonishing versatility. The coconut palm is one; bamboo is an-other. In the more arid areas of India, this distinction is held by a hardy,

fast-growing evergreen of up to 20 meters in height-Azadirachta indica,

commonly known as the neem tree.The neem's many virtues are to a large degree attributable to its chem-

ical constituents. From its roots to its spreading crown, the tree contains anumber of potent compounds, particularly a chemical noted for its astrin-gency that makes it useful in many fields:

Piracy by Patent: The Case of the Net'm Tree 149

Medicine. Neem is mentioned in many ancient texts, and traditionalIndian medical authorities place it at the pinnacle of their pharma-copoeia. The bark, leaves, flowers, seeds, and fruit pulp are used to

treat a wide range of diseases and complaints, from leprosy and dia-

betes to ulcers, skin disorders, and constipation.

Toiletries. Neem twigs are used by millions of Indians as an antiseptic

tooth brush. Its oil is used in the preparation of toothpaste and soap.

Contraception. Neem oil is known to be a potent spermicide and is con-

sidered to be 100 percent effective when applied intravaginally beforeintercourse. Intriguingly, it is also taken internally by ascetics who

wish to abate their sexual desire.

Timber .Besides being hard and fast-growing, its chemical resistance to

termites makes neem a useful construction material.

.Fuel. Neem oil is used as lamp oil, while the fruit pulp is useful in the

production of methane.

Agriculture. The Upavanavinod, an ancient Sanskrit treatise dealingwith forestry and agriculture, cites neem as a cure for ailing soils,plants, and livestock. Neem cake, the residue from the seeds after oil

extraction, is fed to livestock and poultry, while its leaves increase soil

fertility. Most importantly, neem is a potent insecticide~ effectiveagainst locusts, brown plant-hoppers, nematodes, mosquito larvae,

Colorado beetles, and boll weevils.

These properties, and others, known to Indians for millennia, havegiven the tree its Sanskrit name, sarva raga nivarini, "the curer of all ail-

ments... or, in the MuslimJradition, shajar-e-mubarak, "the blessed tree."Access to its various products has been free or cheap: there are s<:>me four-

teen million neem trees in India, and the age-old village techniques forextracting the seed oil and pesticidal emulsions do not require expensive

equipment. A large number of different medicinal compounds basedupon the neem are commonly available.

Since 1925, there has been considerable research into the properties ofneem carried out by over twenty Indian scientific institutes ranging from

the Indian Agricultural Research Institute and the Malaria Research Cen-ter to the Tata Energy Research Institute and the Khadi and Village In-dustries Commission (KVIC). Much of this research was fostered by

Gandhian movements, such as the Boycott of Foreign Goods movement,which encouraged the development and manufacture of local Indian

VANDANA SHIVA AND RADHAHOLLA-BHAR:5°

products, including pesticides, medicines, and cosmetics. These havecome on the market in recent years, some of them produced in the small-

scale sector under Indian law. Until recently, such agricultural and medi-

cinal products were not patentable.

WeRe GRACE DISCOVERS NEEM

For centuries, the Western world ignored the neem tree and its proper-

ties. The practices of Indian peasants and doctors were not deemed wor-thy of attention by the majority of British, French, and Portuguesecolonists. In the last few years, however, growing opposition to chemical

products in the West, in particular to pesticides, has led to a sudden new

interest in the pharmaceutical properties of neem.In 1971, U.S. timber importer Robert Larson observed the tree's use-

fulness in India and began importing neem seed to his company head-

quarters in Wisconsin. Over the next decade, he conducted safety andperformance tests upon a pesticidal neem extract called Margosan-O and

in 1985 received clearance for the product from the u.s. EnvironmentalProtection Agency (EPA). Three years later, he sold the patent for the

product to the multinational chemical corporation, W. R. Grace and Co.Since 1985, over a dozen U.S. patents have been taken out by U.S. and

Japanese firms on formulae for stable neem-based solutions and emul-sions and even for a neem-based toothpaste. At least four of these are

owned by W. R. Grace; three are owned by another U.S. company, theNative Plant Institute; and two by the Japanese Terumo Corporation.

Having garnered their patents and with the prospect of a license fromthe EPA, Grace set about manufacturing and commercializing the prod-uct by establishing a base in India. The company approached several In-

dian manufacturers with proposals to buy up their technology or convincethem to stop producing their value-added pharmaceutical products and

instead to supply Grace with raw material.In many cases, Grace met with a rebuff. M. N. Sukhatme, director of

Herringer Bright Chemicals Pvt. Ltd., which manufactures the neem-

based insecticide Indiara, was put under pressure by Grace to sell the

technology for a storage-stable neem extract that does not require heatingor any chemical change. Sukhatme refused their offers, stating, "I am notinterested to commercialize the product," (M. N. Sukhatme, personal

communication).But Grace eventually managed to arrange a joint venture with a firm

called P. J. Margot Pvt. Ltd. The companies are now setting up a plant in


India that will process neem seed for export to the United States. Initially,the plant will process 20 tons of seed per day. They are also setting up a

network of neem seed suppliers, to ensure a constant supply of seed and a

reliable price.

Grace is likely to be followed by other patent-holding companies. AScienct' magazine article ("The Wonders of the Neem Tree, Jan. 17, 1992),

stated that the U.S. National Research Council (NRC) published a report

designed to "open up the Western world's corporations to the seemingly

endless variety of products the tree might offer." According to one of the

members of the NRC panel, "In this day and age, when we're not veryhappy about synthetic pesticides, (neem] has great appeal."

The appeal is blatantly commercial. The U .S. pesticides market is

worth about $2 billion annually. At the moment, biopesticides such as

pyrethrin, together with their synthetic mimics, constitute about 145°million, but that figure is expected to rise to over $800 million by 1998.

PLAGIARISM OR INNOVATION?

Grace's aggressive interest in Indian neem production provoked a chorusof objections from Indian scientists, farmers, and political activists, whoassert that multinational companies have no right to expropriate the fruit

of centuries of indigenous experimentation and several decades of Indian

scientific research. This has stimulated a bitter intercontinental debate

about the ethics of intellectual property and patent rights.In April 1993, a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report to the

U.S. Congress titled, "Biotechnology, Indigenous Peoples, and Intellec-tual Property Rights," set out some of the arguments used to justifypatenting and its corresponding market control: " Azadirachtin itself is a

natural product found in the seeds of the neem ,tree and it is its significantactive component. There is no patent on it, perhaps because everyone rec-

ognizes it as a product of nature. But. ..a synthetic form of a naturally oc-

curring compound may be patentable, because the synthetic form is nottechnically a product of nature, and the process by which the compound is

synthesized may be patentable." However, neither azadirachtin, a rela-

tively complex chemical, nor any of the other active principles of the neemtree have yet been synthesized in laboratories. The existing patents applyonly to methods of extracting the natural chemical in the form of an

emulsion or solution -methods that are simply an extension of the tradi-tional processes used for millennia for making neem-based products. The

biologically active polar chemicals can be extracted using technology al-

152 VANDANA SHIVA AND RADHA HOLLA-BHAR

ready available to villages in developing countries, says Eugene Shulz,

chair of the NRC panel. "Villagers smash 'em [the seeds] up, soak [them]in cold water overnight, scoop the emulsion off the top and throw it on the

crops" (Science, Jan. 17, 1992).In a letter to Professor Nanjundaswamy, convener of the Karnataka

Rajya Raitha Sangha farmers' organization, W.R. Grace's justification for

patents therefore pivots on the claim that these modernized extractionprocesses constitute a genuine innovation over traditional extractionprocesses, used for millenia: " Although traditional knowledge inspired

the research and development that led to these patented compositions and

processes, they were considered sufficiently novel and different from theoriginal product of nature and the traditional method of use to be

patentable. ...Azadirachtin which was being destroyed during conven-tional processing of Neem Oil/Neem Cake is being additionally extracted

in the form of Water Soluble Neem Extract and hence it is an add-on

rather than a substitute to the current neem industry in India."In short, these corporate processes are supposedly novel advances on

Indian techniques. However, this novelty exists mainly in the context of

the ignorance of the West. Over the two thousand years that neem-basedbiopesticides and medicines have been used in India, many complex

processes were developed to make them available for specific use, thoughthe active ingredients were not given Latinized scientific names. In fact,the widespread common knowledge and common use of neem was one ofthe primary reasQns given by the Indian Central Insecticide Board for not

registering neem products under the Insecticides Act of 1968. The board

argued that neem materials had been in extensive use in India for variouspurposes since time immemorial, without any known deleterious effects.The U.S. EPA, on the other hand, does not accept the validity of tradi-

tional knowledge and has imposed a full series of safety tests upon Mar-

gosan-O.The allegation that azedirachtin was being destroyed during tradi-

tional processes is inaccurate. The extracts were subject to degradationover time, but this was not a problem, since farmers make such extracts to

use when they need them. The problem of stabilization only arose when it

needed to be packaged and transported for a long time to be marketed

commercially.Moreover, stabilization and other advances attributed to modern labo-

ratory technology had already been developed by Indian scientists in the

196os and 19705, well before U.S. and Japanese companies expressed aninterest. In a conversation with Dr. VandanaShiva, Dr. R. P. Singh of the

Indian Agricultural Research Institute asserted, "Margosan-O is a simple


ethanolic extract of neem seed kernel. In the late sixties we discovered the

potency of not only ethanolic extract but also other extracts of neem. ...Work on the neem as pesticide originated from the division as early as

1962. Extraction techniques were also developed for a couple of years.The azadirachtin-rich dust was developed by me."

The reluctance of Indian scientists to patent their inventions, thus leav-ing their work vulnerable to piracy, may in part derive from a recognition

that the bulk of the work had already been accomplished by generations

of anonymous experimenters. This debt has yet to be acknowledged by

the u.s. patentees and their apologists. The April 1993 CRS report claimsthat "the method of scattering ground neem seeds as a pesticide would notbe a patentable process, because this process. ..would be deemed obvi-

ous." Such a statement betrays either lamentable misjudgment or a racist

dismissal of indigenous knowledge. The discovery of neem's pesticidal

properties and of the means to process it was by no means "obvious" butevolved through extended systematic knowledge development in non-Western cultures. In comparison to this first nonobvious leap of knowl-edge, the subsequent minor derivatives are quite "obvious" indeed.

FROM WASTE TO WEALTH

w. R. Grace and P. J. Margo also claim in the letter to Professor Nanjun-

daswamy that their project benefits the Indian economy. It does so, they

say, by "providing employment opportunities at the local level and higherremuneration to the farmers as the price of Neem Seeds has gone up in re-cent times because value is being added to it during the process. Over the

last 20 years the price of the neem seed has gone up from Rs.300 a ton tocurrent levels of Rs.3000:-4000 a ton."

The increase in the price of neem seeds has turned an often free re-source into an exorbitantly priced one, with the local user now competingfor the seed with an industry that is supplying wealthy consumers in the

North. As the local farmer cannot afford the price that industry can, thediversion of the seed as raw material from the community to industry will

ultimately establish a regime in which a handful of companies holdingpatents will control all access and all production processes related to neemas raw material.

P. J. Margo claims in the letter to Professor Nanjundaswamy that thisis "a classic case of converting waste to wealth and beneficial to the Indian

farmer and its economy." This statement is in turn a classic example of theassumption that local use of a product does not create wealth but waste


and that wealth is created only when corporations commercialize the re-sources used by local communities.

There is a growing awareness throughout India that the commoditiza-tion of neem will result in its expropriation by multinational companies.On August 15, 1995, on Indian Independence Day, farmers in the state of

Karnataka rallied outside the offices of the district collector in each districtto challenge the demands for "intellectual property rights" of multina-tionals companies such as W. R. Grace. The farmers carried neembranches as a symbol of collective indigenous knowledge.

Their ciimpaign has been supported by many noted Indian scientists.

Dr. R. P. Singh expressed to the authors his "whole [hearted] support [for

the] campaign against the globalization of Qeem." Dr. B. N. Dhawan,emeritus scientist at the Central Drug Research Institute, maintains, "It is

really unfortunate that the benefits of all this work should go to an indi-vidual or to a company. I sincerely hope that. ..the neem will continue to

remain available for use by people all over the world without paying a

high price to a company." Dr. V. P. Sharma, director of the Malaria Re-search Institute, agrees: "We have discovered the repellent action of the

neem oil. ...There is no question of anybody else in India or outside tak-ing a priority or patent on this aspect of neem oil. I would like this discov-ery to be used as widely as possible to prevent nuisance from insect pests of

public health importance and in the prevention of the disease transmitted

by them."

GLOBAL TRIPS

The movement that has crystallized around the issue of neem patents rep-resents a direct challenge to the attempt, in the Uruguay Round ofGATT,

to impose upon Third World countries the patent regime known as TradeRelated Intellectual Property (TRIPS), which already obtains in theNorth. Before now, it was accepted internationally that different coun-

tries have different needs and priorities; each country is allowed to formu-

late its own patent laws, and the patents granted by or registered in the

country are applicable only there. However, developed nations, particu-larly the United States, accuse Third World countries of engaging in "un-

fair trade practices" if they fail to adopt stringent patent laws. As part ofsuch accusations, the industrialized nations claim to have lost millions ofdollars due to "piracy" by the Third World.

Under the new GATT agreement, all this will change. Universaliza-tion of the TRIPS regime under GATT means that national laws that

Piracy by Patent: Tht' Cast' oftht' Nt't'm Trt't' 155

protect domestic innovation and manufacture will have to be altered toconform with the more stringent patent laws of developed countries,where the maximization of profits is the cornerstone of culture.

Neem is by no means the only living organism that has become subjectto a patent. Scientists are traveling the globe to secure prior rights on po-

tentially patentable organisms. Here is an excerpt from a recent report onthis issue by Canada's Rural Advancement Foundation (RAFI), giving

several examples of corporate piracy of life:

African Soapberry

Another plant that, like neem, has been at the center of attention isthe African Soapberry of endod (Phytdacca dodecandra}. Its proper-

ties as an insecticidal soap, a fish intoxicant and a spermicidal con-traceptive have long been known to Africans, but in 1964, the

Ethiopian Dr. Aklilu Lemma reported to the Tropical Products In-stitute in Britain that it killed the water-snails that are the only vec-tor of the disease, bilharzia. He was subsequently alarmed to find

out that in his absence the Institute patented an extraction processwithout consulting him or crediting him. Northern companies are

not interested in endod as a preventative for bilharzia in the ThirdWorld {which is the province of Baylucide, an expensive and muta-

genic German chemical molluscicide), but for use in toxically sensi-tive situations in the North -in particular, to kill zebra mussel

which clog North American water pipes and disrupt U.S. fisheries.

Patenting endod means that the people of Ethiopia and otherAfrican countries will receive no roy~lties and may eventually be

deprived of the free use of the plant, as it will be needed for the

commercial productio.n of molluscicide for the U.S.

Cotton

Patents on life forms can be very wide-ranging. A subsidiary ofw. R. Grace, Agracetus Inc., has taken out U.S. patents which coverall genetically engineered cotton varieties until 2008, and has the

patent pending in Europe, Brazil, China and India. The patentscover methods of inserting genes into cotton using both bacteriaand "gene gun" technology. Agracetus' vice-president of finance,Russel Smestad, claims: " All transgenic cotton products, regardless

of which engineering technique is used, will have to be commer-

cially licensed through us before they can enter the marketplace."The patent has provoked a chorus of objections from scientists and


breeders. Dr. Jerry Quisenberry of the u.s. Department of Agricul-ture commented: "Public research on cotton, at least at the molecu-lar level, will have~o come to a screeching halt. ...What's to say thesame thing won't happen for other commodities?"

Patent Banks

u.s. multinationals such as Pfizer, Bristol Meyers, and Mercknow hold several hundred patents on life forms, many housedin the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) in Rockville,

Maryland, where there are some 60,000 patented or potentially

patentable organisms. The collection holds potentially commercialmicro-organisms such as yeasts, algae, bacteria, and viruses -forexample, u.s. Patent No. 4,925,663, owned by the University ofFlorida, is a Brazilian fungus known to be fatal to fire ants, whichcause billions of dollars in damage to U.S. crops. Many of the sam-

ples stored in ATCC involve tissue or cell lines scraped from livinghumans or exhumed bodies. These include World Patent No. WO

9208784, or "human t-Iymphotropic virus type 2 from Guaymi In-dians in Panama." This patent is claimed by the U.S. Departmentof Commerce which has demanded global acquiescence to the

patenting of life forms.

For Third World countries, all of these corporate monopolies over neemand also other life forms will have numerous negative consequences.

Firstly, it will undermine our cultural and ethical fabric that supports our

agriculture. We have viewed fundamental life processes as sacred, not ascommodities to be bought and sold on the market. The sacred cow willgive way to patented and cloned livestock. {According to U.S. patent law,the offspring of patented livestock would also be subject to royalty charges

throughout the seventeen to twenty-two years of patent protections, sothat farmers will be made to pay royalties each time a calf is born.) And

seeds, which have been traditionally treated as sacred gifts from Earth ex-

changed freely between farmers, will become patented commodities thatThird World farmers will have to buy. Hans Lenders, secretary general ofthe world seed houses and their breeders, has actually proposed to abolish

farmers' rights to save seed. He says, "Even though it has been a traditionin most countries that a farmer can save seed from his own crop, it is,

under the chilnging circumstances, not equitable that a farmer can usethis seed and grow a commercial crop out of it without payment of roy-

alty. ...[T]he seed industry will have to fight hard for a better kind of

Piracy by Patent: The Case of the Net'm Tree 157

."

protectIon.

The corporate demand to change a common heritage into a commod-ity and to treat profits generated through this transformation as a property

right will bring ethical, cultural, and economic harm to Third Worldfarmers. The Third World farmer has a three-fold relationship with the

corporations that demand a monopoly of life forms and life processes.Firstly, the farmer is a supplier of germ plasm to TNCs. Secondly, the

farmer is a competitor in terms of innovation and rights to genetic re-sources. Finally, the Third World farmer is a consumer of the technologi-

cal and industrial products ofTNCs. Patent protection displaces farmers

as competitors, transforms them into suppliers of free raw materials, andmakes them totally dependent on industrial supplies for vital inputs such

as seeds. Above all, the frantic cry for patent protection in corporate agri-culture is really for protectionfrom farmers, who are the original breeders

and developers of biological resources in agriculture. The corporations

argue that patent protection is essential for innovation -but only for in-novation that brings profits to corporate businesses. Farmers have carriedout innovations over centuries, and public institutions have carried out in-

novations over decades without any property rights or patent protection.

NEW IDEA: COLLECTIVE PATENTING

The unfortunate logic of patenting is that if you can't beat patentees, you

may have to join them. India's traditional absence of property rights on

biological organisms and medicinal and agricultural products has offeredno protection against the outsiders such as W. R. Grace, who put an inter-

national patent upon the.m. Particularly vulnerable are those farmerswhose seed stock, animal breeding stock, and natural pesticides may

gradually become the intellectual property of.national or muitinationalcompanies; they will lose their independence and be forced to pay highprices for products that they could formerly provide for themselves.

For this reason a new alliance of farmers and scientists has embarked

upon the formulation of an alternative form of intellectual property, thecollt'ctitlt' patent -called samuhik gyan sanad, or collective intellectual

property rights (CIPRs). The patents invest the right to benefit commer-cially from traditional knowledge in the community that developed it.The collective patent recognizes knowledge as a social product subject to

local common rights, rather than an element adrift in a limbo of free

global access until the first commercial venture snatches it up. Any com-


pany purloining local knowledge and local resources is engaging in intel-lectual piracy, and the farmers' organizations see it as their right to punishsuch violators. Hence, farmers are demanding that disputes betweenmultinational companies and Third World farmers be settled through

village organizations rather than in GATT panels.To many observers in the North, long alienated from their environ-

ment, the debate about intellectual property rights may seem somewhatethereal and detached from the mechanics of everyday life. To farmers inIndia, however, it represents an expropriation of their immediate sur-

roundings and an attack on their way of life. By targeting the villageneem tree, W. R. Grace's U.S. patents have brought the issue of TRIPShome to Indian peasants. In so doing, farmers have made the versatile,

sturdy, "blessed tree" and "curer of all ailments" a standard of resistance

to the creeping power of global capital.

AFTERWORD

In June 1995, the Upper House of the Indian Parliament (Rajya Sabha)forced the government to defer indefinitely a "patent amendment" bill the

government had proposed. That government bill would have broughtIndia into "compliance" with GATT and the WTO's new rules concern-

ing intellectual property rights.The deferment of the patent bill created an unprecedented situation.

The legislature of the largest democracy in the world has gone in one di-

rection, while the central government feels it must alter its nation's laws toconform to the WTO.

As this chapter goes to press (February 1996), India's laws still do notpermit product patents in pharmaceuticals and agriculture. The indigenousfarmers of India, through their protest activities about neem and other

seeds, deserve full credit for this remarkable development.

Another recent development: On June 9, 1995, a section of the EuropeanParliament registered strong support for India's parliamentary refusal to

grant pharmaceutical product patents and registered a "legal opposition"in the European Patent Office to w. R. Grace's request for a fungicidebased on the extraction of neem oil. This gives hope that the movement is

spreading.Whether the Indian Parliament will hold the line in the long run, or

Pir(lCY by Patcnt: The Case of the Neem Tree 159

whether the Indian government can find ways to circumvent the parlia-ment and the farmers, remains to be seen. But Indian refusal to complythus far with the WTO has the potential for creating a grave crisis for an

organization not accustomed to such democratic challenges.

piracy by patents; the case of the neem tree vandana shiva and radha holla-bhar

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