Jun. 13--WASHINGTON -- Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is all well and good, but U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn is seeking to make sure that Congress prevents patented technologies such as those being birthed at the Memphis Bioworks Foundation from being given away.

Blackburn, R-Tenn., was a co-sponsor and spoke on the House floor this week in favor of an amendment to the Foreign Relations Authorization Act that would instruct U.S. negotiators at a series of international climate-change conferences this year not to agree to exempting countries from licensing requirements of U.S.-patented green technologies.

A Global Climate Change Convention, or treaty, is expected to be banged out over several months leading to a final agreement in Copenhagen, Denmark, in mid-December. A current draft of the convention regarding intellectual property rights, discussed earlier this week in Bonn, Germany, showed sharp divisions between developed and developing countries on the issue, according to press accounts.

Bolivia, the Philippines and Indonesia called for the exclusion of patents over such technologies, while Canada, Switzerland and the U.S. said they want to see strong intellectual property rights retained. The less-developed countries maintain that only through exclusion of patent rights could they be induced to quickly reduce emissions so the global problem of climate change is solved. Bolivia suggested that some patents lead to monopolies.

Blackburn's amendment would protect start-ups and others in the Mid-South with patents for the new technologies.

Beth Hood, a professor of agriculture at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, is one of those the amendment seeks to protect. She and her husband have a patent pending on enzymes used to break down the cellulosic ethanol in agricultural waste such as corn stalks and rice and wheat straw.

"I'm not willing to give it away," she said Thursday, after Blackburn's amendment passed. "I think developing countries need to partner with technology holders. Everybody can win if you don't give it away."

Hood, who has a congressional earmark to pursue her research, said it is not commercially viable yet.

"This industry does not exist yet. We're still in product development. But it's big, and it's going to be big," she said.

Hood said she's not opposed to reducing licensing fees to Third World countries but believes making patented technologies free "will destroy innovation, because if you're not going to make anything out of it, there's no real incentive for doing new stuff."

That was Blackburn's argument during debate Wednesday. She noted that Tennesseans hold 1 percent of all the patents in the hybrid-car industry, behind Michigan, California and Ohio. She said noncommercial transfers of patented technologies, as envisioned by some countries, would be "outright theft" from patent holders.

It would also benefit the most-prominent carbon dioxide polluters, she said.

Pete Nelson of BioDimensions in Memphis, an agriculture clean-technology start-up incubated by the Bioworks Foundation, said he has been following the climate change convention debate but had been unaware of Blackburn's amendment.

He said he "certainly would be in favor of making sure" negotiators don't give licensed intellectual property away.

One indication of the measure's support was that after Blackburn spoke, U.S. Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., said he supported it because it would protect entrepreneurs in his state.

It passed unanimously with 432 votes.

-- Bartholomew Sullivan: (202) 408-2726

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