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American organisations hold the most patents on transgenic plants and crop
improvements using recombinant DNA technology, says Derwent Information, a
London-based company which provides data on patents. In a global patent search,
Derwent found that American organisations took half the places in a GM “top
twenty”, in which position depended on the number of patents held. However, of
the 631 GM patents held by all those in the top twenty, 353
or 56 per cent were owned by American organisations. The
top three patent owners were all American: Pioneer Hi-Bred (68 patents),
Monsanto (62) and its subsidiary Calgene (49). Five of the top twenty were
European and two were Japanese.