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Re: [compost_tea] CT and patent piracy.



The text of your quote stopped with "this new colonization is......Can I go on?  ....  an invention of the devil when it takes a natural substance or a well kown action, method or mechanism and claims it as the property of a few.   There must be a remedy.  Ms Shiva and many others have a logical objection.  And one of the actions by Americans  that make us look like preditors to the rest of the world.   A feeling none of us want.

So I asked for a patent on my tea making system.  Is it a defensible patent?  I don't know. The patent office is years behind in issueing patents.  Would a court hold the method original and defensible?  Maybe.   Why did I ask for the patent?  To try to have a device i could invest an effort in and have enough financial return to let me make it happen.. 

The patent will take all the profits from my business for at least 3 years.  Is it worth the cost?  Probably not.  If the system proves far superior  in tests can they use it in India?  Or elsewhere?  A license would be very low cost.  The license would include help getting the details and the test data to date.   I think we are in this field of activity to help restore the EARTH more than to make money.   Enough money to help make it happen would be nice. 

Well that is not what Ms shiva was going to say but I feel that I am with her as far as her message went.

My Ad for this Sunday  Spring is going to be here very soon.  If you plan to use TEA my 5 tp 30 gallon "Bitti" and 20 to 250 gallon "Bob's" brewers are available.  The Bitti complete with tank about $220 . The  larger system at 250 gallons including a tank can usually be achieved for under $ 1,000.   Test results are available on request. either by fax or by mail.  Web site and new tests are still coming. 

If anyone in India or Africa or Asia or Australia or South America or anywhere else  wants to build one I will help them.  What will my help cost? Not much.  It depends on what they need   Try me.     Bob

 

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 Tom Jaszewski <tomj@livesoil.com> wrote:

 

 

Tom Jaszewski

www.livesoil.com

702-595-7012

 


Dr. Vandana Shiva
is a physicist, ecologist, activist, editor, and author of many books. In India she has established Navdanya, a movement for biodiversity conservation and farmers' rights. She directs the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy. Her most recent book is Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge. This interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva was conducted in St. Louis, Missouri at the First Grassroots Gathering on Biodevastation: Genetic Engineering, on July 18, 1998. Dr. Shiva was the keynote speaker at the conference. The interview was conducted by In Motion Magazine publisher Nic Paget-Clarke.


In Motion Magazine: Why are patents the new form of colonialism?

Dr. Vandana Shiva: Patents are a replay of colonization as it took place 500 years ago in a number of ways. Interestingly, even at that time, when Columbus set sail and other adventurers like him, they also set out with pieces of paper that were called the letters patent which gave the power to the adventurers to claim as property the territory they found anywhere in the world that was not ruled by white Christian princes.

Contemporary patents on life seem to be of a similar quality. They are pieces of paper issued by patent offices of the world that basically are telling corporations that if there's knowledge or living material, plants, seeds, medicines which the white man has not known about before, claim it on our behalf, and make profits out of it.

That then has become the basis of phenomena that we call biopiracy, where seeds such as the Basmati seed, the aromatic rice from India, which we have grown for centuries, right in my valley is being claimed as novel invention by RiceTec.

Neem, which we have used for millennia for pest control, for medicine, which is documented in every one of our texts, which my grandmother and mother have used for everyday functions in the home, for protecting grain, for protecting silks and woolens, for pest control, is treated as invention held by Grace, the chemical company. This epidemic of piracy is very much like the epidemic of piracy which was named colonialism 500 years ago. I think we will soon need to name this round of piracy through patents as recolonialization as a new colonialization which differs from the old only in this - the old colonialization only took over land, the new colonialization is



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