• To encourage the Congress and Executive Branch to oppose any attempts by foreign governments to negotiate new international agreements or to amend existing intellectual property agreements in the WTO and WIPO to weaken patent protection for biotechnology inventions. To encourage Congress and the Executive Branch to oppose the inclusion of new, additional genetic resource disclosure requirements for the patenting of biotechnology inventions in any ABS regime negotiated in the CBD.

Duration: January 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009

General Issues: Trade (Domestic & Foreign), Copyright/Patent/Trademark

Spending: about $145,000 (But it's complicated. Here's why.)

It can be tricky to figure out how much an organization spent on a particular lobbying engagement. The law only requires lobbyists to report the amount they were paid for federal lobbying each quarter rounded to the nearest $10,000—and if it's less than $3,000 in a given quarter (or less than $13,000 for organizations with in-house lobbyists), they don't have to disclose it at all. Plus, some organizations include spending that doesn’t belong in the report—for instance, money spent lobbying state governments or other legal work.

Agencies lobbied since 2008: Agriculture - Dept of (USDA), State - Dept of (DOS), Commerce - Dept of (DOC), U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), Smithsonian Institution, Patent & Trademark Office (PTO), Executive Office of the President (EOP), Health & Human Services, Dept of (HHS), State, Dept of (DOS), Commerce, Dept of (DOC), Agriculture, Dept of (USDA), Library of Congress (LOC)