This book on agriculture and intellectual property rights (IPRs) is a timely contribution on a topical subject. Indeed, with the growing impact of biotechnology, the current changes in the IPR regimes are one of the main issues affecting public and private research organisations in developing as well as developed countries. This volume offers a wide perspective on national and international aspects of the evolution of IPRs for agricultural products. It is organised in four parts. Part I includes five chapters addressing legal systems and their current state of implementation. Chapter 1 provides a legal perspective on the current state of case law (court rulings) in the USA. Chapter 2 addresses the state of IPRs on biotechnology inventions in Europe. Chapter 3 deals with the IPRs implications of the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD). Chapter 4 discusses the IPRs implications of the GATT agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPs). Chapter 5 reports on the ways in which IPRs have affected the policy of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) related to the conditions of access and use of plant genetic resources. Part II includes five chapters addressing economic issues. Chapter 6 provides a general economic treatment of IPR. Chapter 7 analyses the potential market value of farmers' rights. Chapter 8 addresses the key question of the future of international crop breeding in a world of proprietary technology. Chapter 9 addresses the broader issue of knowledge management in agriculture and deals with the key features of institutional systems that favour knowledge generation and transfer in the US context. Chapter 10 offers a new and original perspective on the classic problem of the boundary and complementarity between public and private research. Part III includes two chapters that exploit available data on patented inventions to draw conclusions on the state of biotechnology inventions. Chapter 11 compares patterns of biotechnology patents with patents in other fields of research, both in the US and in Europe. Chapter 12 extends the analysis of Chapter 11 and proposes to identify technological leaderships, using detailed categories of the International Patent Classification (IPC). Part IV includes two chapters providing case studies of two important IPRs-influenced agricultural biotechnology products. Chapter 12 offers a review of the evolution of property rights and regulation for transgenic crops in North America. Chapter 13 discusses the development of canola in Canada.
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