Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-05-09-Speech-3-203-000"
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"en.20120509.21.3-203-000"2
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"Mr President, Mr De Gucht, this is an extremely important discussion. Of course, we are all in favour of inventions being patented and of protecting new products in a way that genuinely benefits the people who have invented them.
However, when it comes to breeding methods in biological fields, we need to consider very carefully what actually constitutes an invention and what is just a discovery or a development of a natural breeding method. That is one of the questions which arises in the context of patenting. There are some cases, including tomatoes and broccoli, where we have to ask ourselves in which direction the Convention on the Grant of European Patents is moving.
Mr De Gucht, you have yourself just admitted that, as far as patentability and the implementation and interpretation of the law in this field are concerned, there are some grey areas. It is precisely these grey areas we are referring to when we say that we need to think about how we handle this issue. We must ensure that the wide range of different varieties and breeds that we have in the European Union and the varied breeding methods, all of which have their own value, are not destroyed by patent claims that are too far-reaching.
We must also ensure that small and medium-sized businesses can continue to develop and exercise their breeders’ privilege and that this is not ruined by granting patents which will prevent this privilege from being applied and which will no longer allow these businesses to make free use of the natural material that is readily available.
This is one of the points that concerns us and we are asking the Commission, Mr De Gucht, to focus its attention on this area and to evaluate to what extent the bans which we imposed in the directive on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions, and which involved heated debates at the time, are really being respected. The principle that what the European Patent Office has laid down, in other words, that not only the explicit wording of the claims but also the overall technical theory behind the application needs to be considered, must be applied and respected."@en1
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