IRRI's Board of Trustees confirmed a new policy on intellectual property rights (IPRs) for the Institute on 14 November 2010 at its meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam. The final text can be downloaded from its website (here).
The new policy is a significant departure from the former policy on IPRs that IRRI has had since 1994. The former policy ruled out the use of IPRs for self-financing. It stated: "IRRI believes that its research should be supported by donors and that it should not look to any of its products or genetic materials as a source of financial income." But now those words have been deleted in the new policy. Instead, the door has been thrown open for IRRI to claim IPRs on its rice lines and to use revenues from the application of these IPRs to finance its programmes and those of its national partners.
The former policy was clear that IRRI would not seek IPRs or any restrictions on "the breeding lines, elite germplasm and parental lines of hybrid rice produced in its conventional breeding program." GMOs were the only exception, as the old policy provided for IRRI to place certain restrictions on the use and distribution of "materials derived from biotechnology" but "only to the extent necessary, and for a limited period."
The new policy, however, while giving IRRI much more leeway over IPRs on "biotechnological innovations", expressly states that IRRI may seek IPRs on all of its "intellectual assets" (germplasm included) and generate revenues from the "management" of these IPRs.
IRRI is now free to seek plant breeders' rights, patents and all manner of IPRs on its breeding lines and varieties, whether conventional seeds, hybrids or GMOs.
All that is left of the old policy's direct call for IRRI to make its research "freely available" is the arbitrary phrase "as freely available as possible". No wonder the word "trust" is no longer to be found in the document. By that conscious omission, IRRI appears to want to forget the role of trustee it is supposed to play over the rice germplasm it has collected from farmers' fields the world over. That requires keeping rice IPR-free.
Those watching IRRI's trajectory over the past 50 years will not be surprised by the pro-IPR bent and unabashed support for GMOs in this new policy. In reality, it only brings the Institute's IPR policies more in line with the changes to its research agenda and its partnerships with multinational seed companies that precede this document. IRRI's simply removed a final obstacle to its full-fledged transformation from public institution to private entity.
Going further:
GRAIN, "IRRI's IPR policies - public mandate, private motives," (Brief backgrounder on IRRI's moves to change its IPR policies), April 2010: http://www.grain.org/hybridrice/?id=419
IRRI under siege - an amateur video of a farmers' mobilisation in front of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) on 12 April 2010: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubj7pJiizFM