Scientists are becoming progressively more involved in developing methods for increasing agricultural productivity and designing plants with certain qualities. As such, genetic engineering has given plant breeders a means to exercise property rights over different varieties of plants. This has created many implications and given way to much controversy, with most objections being raised against the idea of owning life. With the use of comparative studies, this book discusses the legal, agribusiness and public policy issues that connect intellectual property protection with advancements in agricultural biotechnology.
* Seeds of Change - A Link among Legal, Economic and Ag-Biotechnology Communities; * Agricultural Innovation after the Diffusion of Intellectual Property Protection; * Seed Biotechnology, Intellectual Property, and Global Agricultural Competitiveness; * History and Trends in Agricultural Biotechnology Patent Law from a Litigator's Perspective; * Rules v. Standards for Patent Law in the Plant Sciences; * Constitutional Implications of State Seed Saving Statutes; * Patented Inventions and Externalities: Hohfeldian Legal Relationships as They Apply to Pollen Drift and Other Inadvertent Use; * Legal Constraint of Genetic Use Restriction Technologies; * Cereal Offenders: Access and Equity in Trade Negotiations on Knowledge Resources; * Public Provision of Knowledge for Policy Research: The Agricultural Biotechnology Intellectual Property Database; * Network Analysis for Interpreting Patent Data: A Preliminary, Visual Approach; * The Impact of Intellectual Property Rights in the Plant/Seed Industry; * Dynamic Pricing Mechanism to Achieve Pareto Optimality in a Seed Production Contract; * An Economic Comparison of the Incentive to Innovate under Patents and Plant Breeders' Rights; * The Strength and Structure of Intellectual Bio-Property Markets; * Insecure Property Rights and Plant Varieties: The Effects on the Market for Seeds and on Farmers in Argentina; * The regulatory regime and its impact on innovation activities in agro-food biotechnology in the EU and USA. * The Political Economy of Intellectual Property: Re-Examining European Policy on Plant Biotechnology; * Reality and Problems of Plant Protection under Patent Law and Seed and Seedling Law in Japan; * Running Ahead: Plant Variety Protection in the Republic of Korea; * Economic Impact Assessment of Intellectual Property Rights Regulation: The Case of Egypt; * Social and Economic Consequences of Genetic Use Restriction Technologies in Developing Countries; * Agricultural Biotechnology under TRIPS and Beyond: Addressing Social Policies in a Pro-Patent Environment; * To Sow or Not to Sow: Dilemmas in Creating New Rights in Food; * Biodiversity and Biotechnology: A Misunderstood Relation.