{"id":3585,"date":"2013-07-15T10:31:41","date_gmt":"2013-07-15T14:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/sj\/?p=3585"},"modified":"2013-07-20T21:40:45","modified_gmt":"2013-07-21T01:40:45","slug":"plumpynut-patent-has-their-patentleft-option-seen-wide-use-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2013\/07\/15\/plumpynut-patent-has-their-patentleft-option-seen-wide-use-so-far\/","title":{"rendered":"Plumpy’Nut Patent – Has their “patentleft” option seen wide use so far?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1996, two French food scientists, Andr\u00e9 Briend<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Michel Lescanne<\/a>,\u00a0developed a nut-based food formulation to serve as an emergency food relief product in famine-stricken areas. \u00a0The goal was to have a high-density balanced food with a long and robust shelf life – one which, unlike the previous standard of milk-based therapeutic food, could be taken at home rather than in a hospital.<\/p>\n

They soon formed the company Nutriset<\/strong> to further develop and commercialize the idea. \u00a0Their most popular product,\u00a0Plumpy’Nut<\/a><\/strong><\/a>, has shipped millions of units and currently makes up roughly 90% of UNICEF’s stocks of ready-to-use therapeutic foods [RUTFs] for famine relief. <\/p>\n

In forming their company, they captured their idea in the form of a patent (a standard way to declare ownership of and investment) and went on to build a production chain around it. \u00a0This included tweaked formulas and a family of products; production and packaging factories; and grant-writing and research to get certification + field-feedback + approval from various UN bodies. \u00a0This involved few years of up-front investment and reputation-building, and then ramping up mass production of millions of pounds of Plumpy’Nut and its derivatives. They later set up a novel “patentleft” process allowing companies in developing countries to use the patent commercially, and make derivatives from it, at no cost — after a brief online registration. This is something which has received surprisingly little attention since, considering how simple and elegant their solution. Read on for details! <\/p>\n

Once Plumpy’Nut became successful, M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res<\/strong>‘s “access to medicine” arm began to worry that further development and cost-reduction in emergency food aid was being held back by a Nutriset monopoly. \u00a0Perhaps there were cheaper, better, more local ways to build on the idea that the patent was preventing. \u00a0Nutriset had also started thinking about moving towards local production of the food, in 2005 starting a PlumpyField program<\/a>\u00a0supporting partners who manufacture Nutriset products in the developing countries that were receiving them.<\/p>\n

In March 2009, MSF\u00a0wrote an open letter to Nutriset<\/a> stating that their patent was restricting access to this lifesaving technology. \u00a0Their “access to medicine” campaigns had been following this set of patents as a potential barrier to development since at least 2008<\/a>. In response to the open letter and ensuing public discussion, Nutriset and IRD<\/a>\u00a0created<\/a> a “Patents Usage Agreement<\/em><\/a>” which is one of the simplest open-patent protocols I have seen (other almost-free patent protocols<\/a> include the Linux Open Invention Network<\/a>, BiOS<\/a>, and GreenXchange<\/a>)<\/span>:<\/p>\n

Any \u00a0company that is at least 51% locally-owned, and based in one of a list of developing countries, can sign the agreement and mail it to Nutriset. \u00a0On Nutriset’s receipt of the signed agreement, without any other interaction or negotiation, the company can start to use the Plumpy’Nut patent, provided that it uses a different trademark and implements its own quality control.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nutriset asks for nothing in return but adhering to the obligations noted above. \u00a0France’s IRD, which helped to develop the patents, asks for a donation of 1% of profits to their research efforts. \u00a0They make it easy to enter into this agreement through a two-step online registration<\/a> process.<\/p>\n

Sadly — and here is where you come in, dear reader — while there was a great deal of speculation, letter-writing, and concern expressed in 2010 following the open letter, once Nutriset responded in this excellent and unprecedented way, there has been little follow-up (beyond one good Agri-IP blog post<\/a>, on a now-retired blog,\u00a0in Dec. 2010) evaluating how the patent usage agreement has been used. \u00a0It would be helpful to see a recap from either MSF, who felt innovation was being restricted, from any of the high-profile development-aid commentators who pounced on the topic as news, or from the Nutriset team. Can anyone point me to recent analysis?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1996, two French food scientists, Andr\u00e9 Briend\u00a0and\u00a0Michel Lescanne,\u00a0developed a nut-based food formulation to serve as an emergency food relief product in famine-stricken areas. \u00a0The goal was to have a high-density balanced food with a long and robust shelf life – one which, unlike the previous standard of milk-based therapeutic food, could be taken at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[60484,78829,14968,213],"tags":[78831,381,78830],"class_list":["post-3585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-citation-needed","category-ideonomy","category-knowledge","category-metrics","tag-nutriset","tag-patents","tag-plumpynut"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-VP","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3585"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3587,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3585\/revisions\/3587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}