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SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION
Bremer's Order 81 The CPA explicitly defined the legal magnitude of the 100 Orders. An Order was defined as "binding instructions or directives to the Iraqi people that create penal consequences or have a direct bearing on the way Iraqis are regulated, including changes to Iraqi law." In other words, Iraqis were told "do it or die:' Whenever prior Iraqi law might interfere with Bremer's new 100 Orders, Iraqi law was made null and void. The law of occupation was supreme. 3 Buried deep among the new Bremer decrees, which dealt with everything from media to privatization of state industries, was Order 81 on "Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law." Order 81 stated: 11. Article 12 is amended to read as follows: "A patent shall grant its owner the following rights: 1. Where the subject of the patent is a product, the right to prevent any person who has not obtained the owner's authorization from making, exploiting, using, offering for sale, selling or importing that product." 12. Article 13.1 is amended to read as follows: "The term of duration of the patent shall not end before the expiration of a period of twenty years for registration under the provisions of this Law as from the date of the filing of the application for registration under the provisions of this Law:'
A further provision of Order 81 stated, "Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety mentioned in items 1 and 2 of paragraph (C) of Article 14 of this Chapter." Furthermore, CPA Order No. 81 amends Iraq's patent and industrial design law to protect new ideas in any field of technology that relates to a product or manufacturing processes. The amendments permit companies in Iraq, or in countries that are members of a relevant treaty to which Iraq is a party, to register patents in Iraq. The amendments grant the patent owner the right to prevent any person who has not obtained the owner's authorization from exploiting the patented product or process for twenty years from the date of the patent's
