The advocates of patents often argue that they are necessary to promote innovation by providing inventors with a financial incentive. If this were really true then no progress would have occurred in centuries preceding our own when patents were unknown. It is more reasonable to ask whether the rapid scientific and artistic progress in those earlier centuries would have happened if knowledge had been private property.

The medieval era is far more renowned for its progress in architecture than in, say, chemistry. However no architectural technique was patented or copyrighted. No designer of cathedrals required permission to use the techniques of his predecessors or paid for this privilege. In fact these architects were so unpossessive about their works and techniques that their names are often not even recorded on their works. Medieval musicians, likewise, performed and adapted the widely popular songs of the time without paying fees to do so. Imagine how little music there would have been - and how little innovation and diversity - if every performer had to be registered and had to pay to perform or modify existing songs. When today's music industry claims that intellectual property laws promote creativity are they suggesting that their conveyor belt of endless identical boy bands is somehow more imaginative or creative than the music of previous centuries? And are they suggesting that when their directors rake off the royalties from a hundred chart-topping groups they are helping to support more musicians than were performing in earlier centuries?

A far less productive area of medieval knowledge than architecture was alchemy. Alchemy was a secret hermetic tradition passed on from master to apprentice - the medieval equivalent of the current patent regime. The result was intellectual stagnation and the accumulation of nonsensical theories. Only when scientists were able to observe one another's experiments and to read and criticise one another's experiments did we see the emergence of modern chemistry and rigorous chemical theory.

It is difficult to imagine any area of invention that could have flourished under a strict patent regime. How rapidly would the invention of the wheeled vehicles have spread if one family had retained control of the invention? Imagine every charioteer or owner of a cart having to pay a wheel licence fee - and every vehicle bearing a "Wheel Inside" inscription.

The stagnation of the Chinese Empire for centuries was the result of a policy of keeping inventions secret and preventing their widespread use. In order to prevent Europeans from finding out how to make paper, silk, porcelain and gunpowder they had to prevent most of their own population from knowing about or developing these innovations. Microsoft and Monsanto illustrate how this tradition continues today.

Nowadays the re-emergence of intellectual property rights by the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries threatens to privatise science and create a modern equivalent of the cult of the alchemist. Such private knowledge induces 'rule of thumb thinking' rather than in-depth scientific understanding. It dramatically narrows the circle of people who can understand and develop the technology - and likewise narrows the circle of potential beneficiaries. This is perfectly illustrated by the recent controversy over AIDS drugs for Africa - which led to a court decision to allow poor nations to make and use their own generic drugs for AIDS even if these use formulations developed by the pharmaceutical multinationals. It is a decision that will give the poor access to essential drugs that would otherwise have been far too expensive for them - but, equally importantly, the knowledge of the nature of the drugs and the right to manufacture them will lead to progress in understanding and in manufacturing techniques. Unfortunately the patents on this knowledge have not been revoked - they have just been suspended in selected nations. It remains to be seen just how far this agreement will be interpreted before the pharmaceutical giants intervene to stop the process.

Just how reluctant multinational companies are to let go of their patent powers can be seen from Syngenta's handling of the Golden Rice issue. The biotech industry claim they can develop GM crops that will help the lame to walk, the blind to see and the dead to rise again. No such crops exist yet, but in the hope that such promises might help open the door for their other GM crops they have since 1990 been promoting the development of a GM rice modified to contain beta-carotene to help prevent blindness. The gene to do this comes from a daffodil.

Critics have pointed out that blindness from vitamin A deficiency has only become a major problem because the weedkillers from these companies kill the vegetables that these farmers used to grow in their rice fields. They also pointed out that beta-carotene genes exist naturally in some rice varieties and that one natural 'golden rice' (called IR-68114) had already been bred with these genes - far more quickly and cheaply - by the International Rice Research Institute. They pointed out that whilst a single carrot contains more than the adequate amount of beta-carotene for a day, it would take 17 kilogrammes of GM Golden Rice to provide this amount. They also worried that the biotech companies would exploit the invention by restricting its circulation and by charging for its use. Indeed there has been so much hype about the crop that the BBC referred to the "mirage of GM's golden promise" and even the Rockefeller Foundation, who are sponsoring the research, said the PR had "gone too far".

In response to criticism, Syngenta waived the relevant patents - over 40 different patents and contracts had to be waived - and allowed independent researchers to develop the crop. No-one believes that this will be a general policy because, as Patrick Heffer, scientific coordinator of the International Association of Plant Breeders, has said "We are strongly in favor of an intellectual property regime for the food and seed industry, because if you don't have strong intellectual property rights, you won't have incentives for research''. This has led independent biologists to demand an Open Source approach to genetics. Syngenta clearly think their rice patents will turn to gold. It now emerges that they did not really waive their patent rights even in this one case; they have just applied to patent Golden Rice in over 100 nations. They have also applied for five patents on the genes in traditional rice varieties.

For thousands of years the neem tree has been used by villagers in India as a source of medical oils, soaps, preservatives, fungicides and countless other products. In 1994 the US Department of Agriculture and W.R. Grace & Co. (NY) jointly obtained a European Patent on the use of neem oil as an agricultural fungicide. The case became a focus for the 'No Patents on Life' campaign and for protests by Indian farmers. The legal challenge was led by Indian ecologist and womens rights campaigner Vandana Shiva - who popularised the term 'biopiracy' to describe what was happening. In March of this year her legal challenge finally convinced the European Patent Office and the patent was "revoked since the claims were not novel in view of public prior use, which had taken place in India".

"But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?..." This speech, ascribed to Chief Seathl in 1854 may have actually been written by Dr. Henry A. Smith, but it perfectly encapsulates the views of most societies on the limits of property rights. The view that cultural traditions, songs, artistic designs, wild medical plants, cultivated crop varieties, technologies passed from generation to generation and ideas themselves should be private property rather than the common cultural heritage of the community is alien to the world view of most peoples.

The spread of patent laws and intellectual property rights is not just a threat to our traditional rights, it is also a threat to progress itself.

Robert Vint

References
No Patents on Life www.grain.org/briefings/?id=172
'Biopiracy' by Vandana Shiva www.ecobooks.com/books/biopirac.htm
'More than altruism behind donations of AIDS drugs to Africa' www.biomedcentral.com/news/20001208/03