A ‘new’ variety of rice was patented by a foreign company, though such varieties have been present in India for a long time. This is related to
(a) Co-667 (b) Sharbati Sonora
(c) Lerma Rojo (d) Basmati.
Answer (d) : In 1997, a Texas company got patent rights on Basmati rice through the US Patent and Trademark Office. This allowed the company to sell a ‘new’ variety
of Basmati, in the US and abroad. This new variety of Basmati had actually been derived from Indian farmers’ varieties. Indian Basmati was crossed with semi-dwarf varieties and claimed as an invention or a novelty. It caused a brief diplomatic crisis between India and United States with India threatening to take the matter to WTO (World Trade Organisation) as a violation of TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights). Both voluntarily and due to review decisions by United States patent office, Rice Tec lost most of the claims of the patent.
