In what's being hailed as a victory in the world's first case against biopiracy,
the European Patent Office have " upheld a decision to revoke in its
entirety a patent on a fungicidal product derived from seeds of the
Neem, a tree indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. The historic action
resulted from a legal challenge mounted ten years ago by three
Opponents: the renowned Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva, Magda
Aelvoet, then MEP and President of the Greens in the European
Parliament, and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture
Movements (IFOAM). Their joint Legal Opposition claimed that the
fungicidal properties of the Neem tree had been public knowledge in
India for many centuries and that this patent exemplified how
international law was being misused to transfer biological wealth from
the South into the hands of a few corporations, scientists, and
countries of the North. Today the EPO's Technical Board of Appeals
dismissed an Appeal by the would-be proprietors -- the United States of
America and the company Thermo Trilogy -- and maintained the decision
of its Opposition Division five years ago to revoke the Neem patent in
its entirety, thus bringing to a close this ten-year battle in the
world's first legal challenge to a biopiracy patent."

Fascinating.