Review: intellectual property aspects of plant transformation

One of the recurring themes of the debates concerning the application of genetic transformation technology has been the role of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). This term covers both the content of patents and the confidential expertise usually related to methodology and referred to as 'Trade Secrets'. This review explains the concepts behind patent protection, and discusses the wide-ranging scope of existing patents that cover all aspects of transgenic technology, from selectable markers and novel promoters to methods of gene introduction. Although few of the patents in this area have any real commercial value, there are a small number of key patents that restrict the 'freedom to operate' of new companies seeking to exploit the methods. Over the last 20 years, these restrictions have forced extensive cross-licensing between ag-biotech companies and have been one of the driving forces behind the consolidation of these companies. Although such issues are often considered of little interest to the academic scientist working in the public sector, they are of great importance in any discussion of the role of 'public-good breeding' and of the relationship between the public and private sectors.

Intellectual property management in M&A transactions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on the intellectual property (IP) aspects of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions. Design/methodology/approach – A holistic approach is proposed that embraces IP as an integral part of the M&A process in the form of a roadmap for the strategic and purposeful management of IP assets in M&A deals. Findings – Addressing IP issues in transactions in isolation can lead to undesirable consequences (e.g. considerable costs for unplanned purchases of rights). IP due diligence and IP integration project processes can be automated using collaborative software solutions. Thereby, risk can be reduced through the creation of a high level of transparency and predefined responsibilities. Practical implications – Although the proposed IP management framework is based on intellectual property matters relevant to German jurisdiction, conclusions derived and the proposed roadmap are transferable to other jurisdictions and hence have a broader relevance. Evidence for this is provided by the successful application of the roadmap in the context of the multinational transaction stated above. Originality/value – This paper is based on the authors' collective experience, insight and reflected observation of M&A practice gained in advisory M&A roles in management consultancies over a period of more than a decade. The paper summarizes the authors' reflections and observations and brings these into the context of the current management literature. Moreover, this paper builds on earlier published research.

Intellectual property law on architectural design in collaborative design communication as digital assets

Digital Economy is one of the crucial elements promoted by the Digital Britain Report June 2009 and its Implementation Plan August 2009 in order to maintain and further the UK’s position as one of the world’s leading digital knowledge economies. Therefore, the application of Digital Technologies is high in the agenda. As pervasive digital technologies become more widely available, it becomes increasingly important to understand the legal implications of digital assets produced via digital technologies in collaborative design communication. Architects and engineers depend on intellectual property law to protect their original works. Copyright protection is automatic once a tangible medium of expression in any form of an innovative material, conforming the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, is created. Although copyright law provides automatic protection to all original architectural plans, the limitation is that it only protects the expression of ideas but not the ideas themselves. The purpose of this research is to explore how effective the UK’s copyright law regime is for protecting the rights and interests of architects and engineers in their works as digital assets. The UK’s copyright law is ripe for modernisation not only to protect the rights of designers but also to further UK’s position in digital economy.

Exploring the feasibility of farmers' rights

In many developing countries, there is concern that a conventional system of plant breeders' rights provides no rewards to farmers for their role in the conservation and enhancement of agro-biodiversity. To redress this imbalance, developing countries are incorporating farmers' rights provisions in their plant variety protection legislation. This article examines the feasibility of farmers' rights provisions based on intellectual property rights. It argues that the farmers' rights provisions crafted by some developing countries will involve enormous operational difficulties, while IPR-based farmers' rights are unlikely to provide significant economic returns to farmers or farming communities. At the same time, farmers' rights provisions, as currently conceived, are likely significantly to dilute the incentives for innovation provided to institutional plant breeders.

Plant variety protection, innovation, and transferability: Some empirical evidence

Under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, all member-countries of the World Trade Organization are required to provide an "effective" system of plant variety protection within a specific time frame. In many developing countries, this has led to a divisive debate about the fundamental desirability of extending intellectual property rights to agriculture. Empirical studies on the economic impacts of plant variety protection, especially its ability to generate large private sector investments in plant breeding and to facilitate the transfer of technology, have been very limited. This paper examines two aspects of the international experience of plant variety protection: (a) the relationship between legislation, research, and development expenditures and plant variety protection grants, i.e., the innovation effect and (b) the role of plant variety protection in facilitating the flow of varieties across countries, i.e., the transferability effect.

Potential economic impacts of terminator technologies: policy implications for developing countries

The terminator gene can render seeds sterile, so forcing farmers to purchase fresh seed every year. It is a technological solution to the problem of market failure that could increase the appropriability of R&D investment more effectively than intellectual property rights legislation or patents. This paper shows that appropriability should be more than tripled and that this leads to greater private R&D investment, which may be expected to double or triple. This would bring open-pollinating varieties into line with F1 hybrids, for which seed cannot be saved. In turn, the increased investment should raise yield increases to levels similar to those for hybrid crops. Thus, there are benefits to set against the possible ecological and environmental costs and the clear distributional and social consequences. The paper discusses the way the seed market is developing, the possible impacts, especially from a developing country viewpoint, and considers the policy changes that are needed.

Patents and Haploid Plants

One of the important themes in any discussion concerning the application of haploids in agricultural biotechnology or elsewhere is the role of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). This term covers both the content of patents and the confidential expertise, usually related to methodology and referred to as "Trade Secrets". This review will explain the concepts behind patent protection, and will use the international patent databases to analyse the content of these patents and trends over the last 20 years. This analysis from regions including North America, Europe, and Asia reveals a total of more than 30 granted patents and a larger number of applications. The first of these patents dates from 1986, and although the peak of activity was in the late 1990s, there has been continuous interest to the present day. The subject matter of these patents and applications covers methods for anther and pollen culture, ovule culture, the use of specific haploid-inducing genes, the use of haploids as transformation targets, and the exploitation of genes that regulate embryo development. The species mentioned include cereals, vegetables, flowers, spices and trees.

Institutional capacity and implementation issues in farmers' rights

Armed with the ‘equity’ and ‘conservation’ arguments that have a deep resonance with farming communities, developing countries are crafting a range of measures designed to protect farmers’ access to innovations, reward their contributions to the conservation and enhancement of plant genetic resources and provide incentives for sustained on-farm conservation. These measures range from the commericialization of farmers’ varieties to the conferment of a set of legally enforceable rights on farming communities – the exercise of which is expected to provide economic rewards to those responsible for on-farm conservation and innovation. The rights-based approach has been the cornerstone of legislative provision for implementing farmers’ rights in most developing countries. In drawing up these measures, developing countries do not appear to have systematically examined or provided for the substantial institutional capacity required for the effective implementation of farmers’ rights provisions. The lack of institutional capacity threatens to undermine any prospect of serious implementation of these provisions. More importantly, the expectation that significant incentives for on-farm conservation and innovation will flow from these ‘rights’ may be based on a flawed understanding of the economics of intellectual property rights. While farmers’ rights may provide only limited rewards for conservation, they may still have the effect of diluting the incentives for innovative institutional breeding programs – with the private sector increasingly relying on non-IPR instruments to profit from innovation. The focus on a rights-based approach may also draw attention away from alternative stewardship-based approaches to the realization of farmers’ rights objectives.

Reworking the NAFTA: departures from traditional frameworks

This paper reviews the treatment of intellectual property rights in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and considers the welfare-theoretic bases for innovation transfer between member and nonmember states. Specifically, we consider the effects of new technology development from within the union and question whether it is efficient (in a welfare sense) to transfer that new technology to nonmember states. When the new technology contains stochastic components, the important issue of information exchange arises and we consider this question in a simple oligopoly model with Bayesian updating. In this context, it is natural to ask the optimal price at which such information should be transferred. Some simple, natural conjugate examples are used to motivate the key parameters upon which the answer is dependent