UPDATE
Just this week, the US Beef Breeds Council, a coalition of the major US beef breeds, voiced unanimous support for the following resolution:
A Resolution of the US Beef Breeds Council 07/10/2014
WHEREAS, Leachman Cattle of Colorado (LCoC) and other parties have recently sought patent protection for technology that has been widely utilized for many years to make genetic improvement and assign value to beef cattle and other species of animals and plants; and
WHEREAS, the American Simmental Association (ASA) faces legal action from LCoC and others claiming patent infringement and disclosure of those widely utilized technologies; and
WHEREAS, the technologies in question result from publicly-funded research by land-grant universities and governmental research agencies, and were released by those organizations into the public domain; and
WHEREAS, those technologies have been published in scores of scientific journal articles that are publicly available, as early as 1943, and in textbooks used in undergraduate and graduate education; and
WHEREAS, the Beef Improvement Federation (BIF) has published said technologies in its publicly availableGuidelines for Uniform Beef Improvement Programs beginning in 1970; and
WHEREAS, those technologies have been utilized by non-profit breed associations and for-profit breeding corporations in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and New Zealand; therefore, let it be
RESOLVED, that the Beef Committee of the National Association of Animal Breeders (NAAB) strongly opposes granting of patent protection to LCoC or any other entity for these publicly available and widely utilized technologies.
This resolution had previously been unanimously supported by the National Association of Animal Breeders at the recent Beef Improvement Federation symposium in Lincoln, NE.
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As mentioned in a previous enews, the industry has shown overwhelming support for the position ASA has taken on the Leachman patent. The support was codified when the National Association of Animal Breeders unanimously passed the following resolution at the Beef Improvement Federation Symposium last week:
A Resolution of the Beef Committee of the National Association of Animal Breeders 06/19/2014
WHEREAS, Leachman Cattle of Colorado (LCoC) and other parties have recently sought patent protection for technology that has been widely utilized for many years to make genetic improvement and assign value to beef cattle and other species of animals and plants; and
WHEREAS, the American Simmental Association (ASA) faces legal action from LCoC and others claiming patent infringement and disclosure of those widely utilized technologies; and
WHEREAS, the technologies in question result from publicly-funded research by land-grant universities and governmental research agencies, and were released by those organizations into the public domain; and
WHEREAS, those technologies have been published in scores of scientific journal articles that are publicly available, as early as 1943, and in textbooks used in undergraduate and graduate education; and
WHEREAS, the Beef Improvement Federation (BIF) has published said technologies in its publicly available Guidelines for Uniform Beef Improvement Programs beginning in 1970; and
WHEREAS, those technologies have been utilized by non-profit breed associations and for-profit breeding corporations in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and New Zealand; therefore, let it be
RESOLVED, that the Beef Committee of the National Association of Animal Breeders (NAAB) strongly opposes granting of patent protection to LCoC or any other entity for these publicly available and widely utilized technologies.
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Several weeks ago we informed ASA membership and the industry via eNews that Leachman Cattle of Colorado (LCoC) had filed a lawsuit against ASA. The lawsuit is intended to detour ASA from challenging a patent recently issued to LCoC–a patent that our staff and board of trustees considers invalid and potentially harmful to our industry. Since that email we have received an overwhelmingly favorable response to our position on the LCoC patent.
The lawsuit centers around ASA’s Feeder Profit Calculator (FPC). Besides patent infringement, the lawsuit asserts that ASA used proprietary information developed by the plaintiffs in the development of our FPC–a claim easily refuted and demonstrably false. ASA’s FPC utilizes only two components to predict the relative economic value of a set of feeder calves: 1) ASA’s TI index developed with Dr. Mike MacNeil of USDA, which was first published in 2005, and 2) publicly available research results compiled by Dr. David Lalman of Oklahoma State University, which pertain to the impact of management factors (e.g., preconditioning) on feedlot and carcass traits. Clearly, LCoC had no involvement in developing either of the components used in ASA’s FPC, which we are prepared to prove in court.
We are also prepared to challenge the LCoC patent through the lawsuit foisted upon us by LCoC as well as through the US patent office. As mentioned in our previous statement, LCoC has interpreted their patent as providing them with the exclusive right to use EPDs to predict the economic value of a set of feeder calves. Their stake to that claim is fueled by an assertion in their patent application that no organization besides themselves had ever used EPDs in that manner. The Angus Association of America (AAA) is the focus of a particularly disconcerting declaration in the LCoC patent application: “AAA does not offer predictions of genetic merit for groups of calves out of multiple ancestors”. In fact, AAA has been doing exactly that for many years through their Angus Source Program.
It certainly is not our desire to spend time and resources on something as unproductive as a lawsuit or patent challenge. However, as stated in our previous enews, the ASA feels obligated to protect our industry’s right to continue to perform genetic evaluation functions in an open and public manner. We feel that settling for anything less would be a dereliction of duty to our members and our industry.
Source: ASA eNews