Intellectual property rights in common bean breeding

Widengård, Marie (2003) Intellectual property rights in common bean breeding. Dept. of Rural Development Studies, SLU.

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Abstract

If intellectual property rights (IPR) are incentives for plant research, how do they affect plant development for the benefit of the resource-poor?

This thesis analyses the implications of IPR from the perspective of small-scale users, providers and developers of seed. Special attention is given participatory plant breeding, i.e. the approach that joins farmers and professional breeders, local and formal conditions and the knowledge and visions held by rural communities, civil society and State. The thesis brings on a discussion on intellectual contributions, claims and preferences in a case of participatory breeding and as such, it explores the opportunities and constraints of IPR when breeding is done in collaboration between different actors. The legal requirements for plant breeders’ rights of distinctness and uniformity are observed in the field as well as genetically analysed.

In general, the thesis illustrates how international trade regulations translate into national law and onto the field of local and participatory breeding. In focus is the common bean and legislative system of Nicaragua, a developing country that recently adopted plant breeders’ rights that go beyond world trade agreements and against farmers’ rights to exchange and informally sell seed. The thesis also analyses the possible impacts of rights in counterbalance, i.e. community intellectual rights in draft.