What is the Basmati rice dispute about?
Mooney: That’s a good example of what’s almost universally regarded as a bad patent. A Texas-based company, RiceTec Inc., claims they acquired Basmati from several sources, including through the U.S. gene bank. Of course the original material was from Pakistan, India, Thailand and probably the Philippines as well. They crossed that material with U.S. long-grained rices grown in Texas and California to develop rice varieties that they call Texmati and Kasmati that they claim as the equivalent of Basmati. They have the same aromatic qualities and are marketed as being Basmati-like rice to farmers and consumers in North America and Europe. The challenges on this are at least at three levels. One is a technical challenge that it’s just a bad patent — they didn’t really do any new and useful work on it at all. Second, they took the knowledge from local communities in India and Pakistan that has been developed over a very long time. Under intellectual property systems that provide for prote
