Constructing an International Intellectual Property Acquis for the Agricultural Sciences
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Description
The agricultural industries have increasingly come to rely on intellectual property law to protect investments in improved plants and breeding techniques. While these appropriation strategies (along with new self-help opportunities) enhance profits and increase incentives to invest, they can also endanger innovation, contribute to an unjust distribution of knowledge outputs, and lead to practices that undermine food security. At one time, every country could balance the costs and benefits of intellectual property on its own and craft law that met its individual interests. As global trade has increased, however, national flexibilities have diminished. Interstate competition means that every country must consider what its neighbours are doing. As important, intellectual property lawmaking has moved to the international level. Negotiations have been characterized by regime shifts and successively more strident demands for ever-stronger protection. Weaker countries, along with other proponents of a more open technological environment, have had a difficult time being heard. As Daniel Gervais has informally said, “intellectual property is on a grain elevator: it moves only in an upward direction.” Demonstrations in Doha, in Seattle, in Wellington—wherever international negotiators meet to discuss intellectual property issues—suggest that a new approach, one that is more attentive to broader social values, is necessary. After discussing the nature of the problems confronting the agricultural sector and the difficulties states encounter in solving these problems domestically, this chapter applies a framework I developed with Graeme Dinwoodie in our recent book, A Neofederalist Vision of TRIPS: The Resilience of the International Intellectual Property Regime. In the book, we argue that when intellectual property law is viewed holistically and over time, there are certain core principles that appear repeatedly. While many of these principles protect rights holders and state interests, there are also principles that protect public access and future generations of innovators. These are harder to find in international conventions. Negotiators know more about trade law than intellectual property law, and they are heavily influenced by the creative industries. The result is that these agreements may leave some room for public-regarding measures, but the details are left to member states. It is thus the job of scholars to identify these principles and explain their critical role in innovation policy to legislators, courts, negotiators, and international adjudicators. In the book, Professor Dinwoodie and I considered the appropriate balance in the context of the arts and sciences. This chapter takes a closer look at agricultural innovation.
Source Publication
The Intellectual Property-Regulatory Complex: Overcoming Barriers to Innovation in Agricultural Genomics
Source Editors/Authors
Emily Marden, R. Nelson Godfrey, Rachael Manion
Publication Date
2016
Recommended Citation
Dreyfuss, Rochelle C., "Constructing an International Intellectual Property Acquis for the Agricultural Sciences" (2016). Faculty Chapters. 1173.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1173
