BioWorld International Correspondent

BRUSSELS, Belgium - The crisis in Iraq has placed on the back burner the United States' action against European Union limits on the marketing of genetically modified organisms.

The U.S. has delayed its decision on whether to challenge the EU moratorium at the World Trade Organization. EU officials greeted the news with relief, since they maintain that legal action would undermine their efforts to build public and political support for lifting the ban. "It will be bad politics to start this now," European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said. "We've consistently told them if we were in their shoes we wouldn't do it this way."

But the delay does not mean the issue is closed. "It is a concern that the EU's unscientific approach to such products would spread to other countries or would have a chilling effect on other countries," U.S. Deputy Trade Representative Peter Allgeier said last week in Geneva. The U.S. is now trying to persuade other major agricultural exporting countries to join it in any WTO action.

"We would strongly advise not to start action at this moment in the WTO," said Franz Fischler, European commissioner for agriculture, rural development and fisheries, in Washington last week. "There is a clear risk our skeptical consumers would take this as an opportunity to make even more difficulties against the use of GM foods than in the past. There is a clear risk that if one starts action now that the European Parliament could be reluctant to make the final decision" on the approval process, which could come in "three or four months," he said.

EuropaBio Initiates Petition On Patents

A petition has been initiated by EuropaBio, the European association for bioindustries, to put pressure on the European Union for a final decision on the long-awaited "Community Patent."

A broad coalition from within the biotechnology and health care sector has allied itself in a Europe-wide campaign to persuade EU member states to put the finishing touches to the functioning system of intellectual property protection, as a key to boosting industry competitiveness.

The project has been on the table of EU ministers since the summer of 2000. The idea of the Community Patent is to give inventors the option of obtaining a single - and administratively simplified - patent that would be legally valid throughout the European Union. The proposal aims to reduce the costs of patenting and ensure legal certainty and consistent rules throughout Europe.

But EU ministers have been unable to agree on the number of languages for a patent request and claims, which office or offices a patent can be filed and searched in, and which court or courts should have jurisdiction over interpreting patent law and handling infringements. At present, for instance, the council is debating whether patents and claims should be filed in three or up to 11 languages - or even 20 after the EU expands next year into eastern Europe.

At the center of the campaign is an electronic petition titled "A Single Patent for a Single Market." The petition is being organized to send a signal to ministers, and will be offered at the next summit of EU leaders, on March 21. "Our members consider a single Community Patent system to be of crucial importance to encourage investment in research and development," says EuropaBio, whose national member associations are also backing the campaign.

The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations also is inviting all its members and all other interested parties to sign. It says: "We need an affordable Community Patent, with a maximum of three languages, that will ensure legal certainty through an integrated/Community jurisdictional system with judges specialized in patent matters. Our message is clear and simple: the Community Patent must be a tool to improve the competitiveness of our industry. If it does not meet our basic needs, our companies will simply not use it."