The Ethiopian government is celebrating a major victory in a long-running dispute over who owns the patent for products made from teff – an ancient grain that forms the basis of Ethiopia\u2019s staple food, injera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2003, a Dutch company registered a European patent for teff-related products, claiming that these were \u201cinvented\u201d by a certain Jans Roosjen, a senior company official. In recent years, Ethiopia has complained that this is totally inaccurate \u2014 Ethiopians have been using teff for millennia, after all \u2014 and that the patent prevents Ethiopian companies from exploiting a growing global market for teff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teff is gluten-free and rich in nutrients and has been touted as the next major health food fad, following in the footsteps of quinoa and kale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This November, a Dutch court ruled that the patent contained no \u2018inventiveness\u2019, and was therefore null and void. The news was announced by Fitsum Arega, until recently the chief of staff of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, on Twitter on Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI just learned that The Court of The Hague ruled against the Teff patent holder. This is great news,\u201d he said. \u201cI hope we can learn from this that our national assets must be protected by Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The embassy of the Netherlands in Ethiopia confirmed the news. \u201cThis embassy confirms the November ruling. The reason for the late announcement is the time for appeal was still running. As no appeal was made, the verdict is now final: the claim to processing teff by patent holder is null and void in the Netherlands,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This would not be the first time that a western company has tried to patent or copyright an existing African product. One example: several French and American companies have tried to trademark \u2018rooibos\u2019, the herbal tea that has been grown in South Africa for generations. To prevent this from happening again, South Africa\u2019s department of trade and industry successfully obtained \u2018geographic indicator status\u2019 for the product, meaning that only manufacturers in South Africa may use the name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: Mail&Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ethiopian government is celebrating a major victory in a long-running dispute over who owns the patent for products made from teff – an ancient grain that forms the basis of Ethiopia\u2019s staple food, injera. In 2003, a Dutch company registered a European patent for teff-related products, claiming that these were \u201cinvented\u201d by a certain …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":12814,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-embassy-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/ethiopia-farmers-harvest-teff-OUS_27075-1220x763.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12813"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12815,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12813\/revisions\/12815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethiopianembassy.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}