Via patents on AI programmes, the US company Inari, which is also involved in the development of the AI model ‘FloraBERT’, is seeking to gain exclusive rights to the use and disposal of natural gene variants. The international patent application WO2023250505 claims the use of natural DNA variants that regulate the activity of certain genes and occur in all plant species.
Moreover, Pioneer (a Corteva subsidiary) has filed a patent application for an AI program that can be used to design the characteristics of plants, animals and microorganisms (WO2024006802).
These developments risk creating an impenetrable ‘patent thicket’: In addition to patents claiming the respective genetic engineering processes, seeds and livestock would also be affected by patents claiming the digital processing of genetic data.