Category: Humanitarian

Plumpy’Nut Part 5: Why Africa is vulnerable

“Perhaps a patent in Africa simply does not mean the same as a patent somewhere else. On the face of it, this might sound like a good thing: if there is no real functioning patent system, IPR will not cause problems.  On second thought, the idea is not so good after all, because it results in a random system.”

While looking into the Plumpy’Nut case (see Part 4 and web page), I came to realize that I have almost no idea whether flaws in the African patent system are playing a role. There is very little information readily available even on the Internet, and whether that information is reliable is anyone’s guess.  I will have to start from first principles, and dig up what I can. So far, the information is puzzling. Africa does have a patent system on paper; but whether that system actually works is a separate question altogether.

Continue reading Plumpy’Nut Part 5: Why Africa is vulnerable

Plumpy’Nut, Part 4: What do we really know?

“Perhaps Nutriset could have saved more lives by freeing the license on Plumpy’Nut. But how does one actually measure something like this? Is it even true?”

It makes sense to look at patent disasters from the point of view of “accident investigations”. Trying to assign blame makes no sense; it is more important to figure out what went wrong, how, and why; and even more importantly, what could be done to prevent scenarios like this in the future, if they need to be prevented.

The case of Plumpy’Nut (see web page) has been covered in earlier postings.  Almost everyone who has commented on the case has held that the patent system is broken. Perhaps. But just how is it broken? Continue reading Plumpy’Nut, Part 4: What do we really know?

Plumpy’Nut, part 3: What could a truly evil company do?

The hard facts of Case Plumpy’Nut have been given in Part 1 and Part 2. Now is the time to speculate. If someone wanted to be truly evil with this patent, could they start a “Kill the Children” campaign, as I have outlined in Trolling on the Human Rights?

This is clearly a patent that has the potential to be truly dangerous in the wrong hands. However, whatever bad press Nutriset has gotten, it is not causing the maximal damage that such a patent would allow.

Nor is it the only player on this field;  even a very quick Google search brings up patents and applications which on the face of it don’t seem to differ that much from the Plumpy’Nut. (See for example 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,…). All of these products are however slightly inferior to Plumpy’Nut in some way, so that Plumpy’Nut is optimized for famine relief.

Consider now a different scenario. Suppose Nutriset was not producing Plumpy’Nut anymore, but instead had sold the patent to a non-practicing entity X.  (Non-practicing entity NPE is a polite term for “patent troll”)

Continue reading Plumpy’Nut, part 3: What could a truly evil company do?

Plumpy’Nut, part 2: The ethics

The basic facts of the Plumpy’Nut case were shown in the previous part.  It sounds controversial, but what is intriguing about this case is that things could be significantly worse. Compared to the extremes that the law would allow it to do, Nutriset is behaving somewhat decently.

Continue reading Plumpy’Nut, part 2: The ethics

Plumpy’Nut, Part 1: The basic facts

Can something as trivial as peanut butter be patented, and the patent used to hinder famine relief efforts? Yes.

I have been updating some IPR-related post of mine from way back in 2012 to see whether anything has changed. Not much, it seems. IPR is an obscure and ethically complex area, but in some cases fascinating in a fairly perverse way.

I find that Plumpy’Nut is the most fascinating of them all. It sounds like a case of a evil guy profiting from starving people… yet in fact it is not so simple at all. This is a series in multiple parts, and each part goes deeper and deeper into the technical details — and also bewilderment.  In the end, I have no idea what the ethics of the Plumpy’Nut case are.

Continue reading Plumpy’Nut, Part 1: The basic facts

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