Ethiopian Teff: The Fight Against Biopiracy

[unspeakablehorror]

Ethiopian Teff: The Fight Against Biopiracy

Teff, also known as dwarf millet, is to Ethiopia what maize is to Mexico and rice is to China: the country's most important foodstuff, the basis for the national dish injera — a soft, spongy, pancake-like bread — and an important part of its cultural heritage.  

 

Farmers in the Ethiopian highlands started cultivating teff 3,000 years ago.

Perhaps understandably, many Ethiopians are annoyed that a Dutch company holds a patent on processed teff flour. To this day, in some European countries, no flour from the gluten-free and nutrient-rich super grain may be sold without paying royalties to the Netherlands. This could soon change, and it if it does it will be partly due to the private initiative of a German lawyer.

'Teff belongs to the Ethiopians'

Ethiopians find it particularly perfidious that the Dutch company in question started by conducting research on teff together with the Ethiopian state and agreed to share the genetic information obtained for commercial use. But in 2004, it filed a patent alone.

I'm glad the patent was thrown out in the Netherlands, but I do disagree with using the term 'biopiracy' for this kind of thing, because I think that conflates this kind of imperialistic behavior that benefits from the law with being charged with a crime against  'intellectual property' law, which is the exact opposite of what is causing these problems.  The problem here is 'intellectual property' itself.

This also did not invalidate the patent in the other European countries where it is valid:

However, because European Union patents are transferred to national patent systems in member states, the teff patent remained unchanged in some other EU countries, including Germany. Attorney Anton Horn heard about this from an Ethiopian student friend. He discussed with colleagues what could be done at a legal level. "And at some point I made the decision: I'll do it myself," Horn said.

He filed a nullity suit at the Federal Patent Court in Munich privately and at his own expense in the summer of 2019. The Dutch company holding the patent waived its German rights before the complaint reached the court.

It is likely that the teff flour patent will expire this summer in all other European countries. According to current entries in the register, the company has not paid any administrative fees for its patents since 2019, says Anton Horn.

According to this Medium article, the US and Japan never viewed this patent as sufficiently novel despite attempts to file by the Dutch company Health and Performance Food International B.V. (HPFI).  I include this article because it contains many more additional details on this matter, though I strongly disagree with the way it implies the Ethiopian government is responsible  for what the Dutch company did because it didn't preemptively anticipate and attempt to prevent this behavior.  Whatever else the Ethiopian government may be responsible for, I wouldn't blame them for that.