"Free Seeds, Not Free Beer": Participatory Plant Breeding, OpenSource Seeds, and Acknowledging User Innovation in Agriculture
2009; Fordham University School of Law; Volume: 77; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0015-704X
Autores Tópico(s)CRISPR and Genetic Engineering
ResumoIn the context of user-innovation, agriculture has been a field where farmers substantively contributed to developing and improving existing and new plant varieties. This essay paraphrases Free Software Foundation founder and computer programmer par excellence Richard Stallman’s description of what “free software” means in the context of what the open source software movement may have to impart to contemporary plant breeding. It looks at how the rise and expansion of intellectual property rights in plants and varieties during the twentieth century has significantly reduced the role of farmers in plant breeding, turning them into consumers providing labor to raise crops in which others hold the underlying intellectual property rights. This essay makes three basic points. First, it examines the shift in the treatment of plant genetic resources (PGRs) from “common heritage” to “sovereign property.” This shift occurred during 1980s through the 1990s and was embodied in the characterization of PGRs in the 1983 International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources (IUPGR) to the characterization in the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as “sovereign property.” This was a development that was harmonious to expanding intellectual property rights in such resources as articulated and required by the 1994 Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS). Secondly, this essay stresses the relationship between the public domain and intellectual property rights by examining the difference between “openaccess” resources, where no one has the right to exclude, and “limited
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