Absence of seed DNA patent law endangers investments

The government in its new draft seed policy has emphasised on registering patent rights of the parentage line seed and their DNA fingerprinting to protect investments in this sector, officials said.
But Bangladesh is yet to enact law under intellectual property rights (IPR). This may endanger research and development both by the government and private sector in seeds.
A leading chamber leader said after the signing of TICFA agreement that the focus in the upcoming days for patenting the rights of seeds in the country will be more.
Along with issues like labour rights and paying royalty for US products, seed patent rights would also be major issue between the two countries, he said.
Sources said though there is a technical committee in the government, there is no supportive law in the country for protecting investments.
Seed sector sources said, currently parentage line seeds are being imported by the seed traders for high yield crops. It is also being developed and produced by the local investors in their laboratories.
According to market data a good amount of investments have already taken place in the seed industry and some are in the pipeline to meet the growing demand for food in the country.
But due to absence of patent rights law for parentage line seeds, DNA fingerprint investments both by the seed growers and importers are under threat as any one may claim royalty for parentage line seeds at any time by ignoring the real innovator, be it the government or local companies.
The current local market for seeds is eight thousand tonnes. Of this, only 1600 tonnes are produced by the BADC, only a few per cent by local private growers, and the rest is met from imports, according to data provided by private seed growers.
Many local companies are currently importing parentage lines and producing seeds locally, the data also says.
A source in a leading seed growing company said parentage line seed technology is new in the country.
He said as local companies are developing parentage line and many importers are importing the same parent lines under different trade names so it is the demand of the time for identification of their DNA fingerprint and for registering their patent rights.
He said, "As this technology is new in our country so there was no law. But the current growing investments in seeds require patents for DNA fingerprints of the parentage lines to protect investments in research and development."
Explaining he said, parentage lines (male and female individually) are specially designed seeds from which the local investors produce seeds.
Metal Seeds Limited executive director Md. Farhad Uddin said investors in the seed industry are producing parentage lines in the laboratories and developing these are costly.
He feared that any foreign government or organisation may at any time claim any parentage line saying they had discovered the line and had patented its DNA fingerprint and may claim royalty from local entrepreneurs.
He said if there is law that supports registering DNA fingerprint patents, it will protect local investments.
Seeds Certification Agency Director A H Iqbal Ahmed said, "Currently we do not have law on patenting seeds or parentage lines but due to growing investments in this sector it is demand of the time to protect investments by both the government and the private investors."
He said the latest draft seed policy the government has emphasised for registering such patents rights and the government is trying to train people and establish high tech laboratories for research on DNA fingerprinting of parentage line seeds.
He admitted that the government is yet to equip its laboratories for DNA fingerprinting of the locally developed and imported parentage line seeds as per demand by the private growers.
The certification agency official said, the government is at the stage of formulating strict laws for registering patents but before that infrastructure and technological knowledge is necessary for such highly technical assignments.
Mr Uddin said the local private seed firms have already developed over one hundred parentage line seeds and another 400 are in research and development stage.
He said the existing government infrastructure is not capable to handle patent rights for seeds.
Mr. Uddin of the Metal Seed said their investments are already advancing ahead in developing more parentage lines.
He said, "My company has locally developed hybrid seeds for twenty two types of vegetables and their demand is growing higher day by day."
He said the current vegetable market size is more than Tk5.0 billion and their company Metal Seed is trying to increase their share in this growing market.