1st Edition

The Intellectual Property and Food Project From Rewarding Innovation and Creation to Feeding the World

By Charles Lawson, Jay Sanderson Copyright 2013

    The relationship between intellectual property and food affects the production and availability of food by regulating dealings in products, processes, innovations, information and data. With increasingly intricate relations between international and domestic law, as well as practices and conventions, intellectual property and food interact in many different ways. This volume is a timely consideration and assessment of some of the more contentious and complex issues found in this relationship, such as genetic technology, public research and food security, socio-economic factors and the root cause of poverty and patent-busting. The contributions are from leading scholars in this emerging field and each chapter foregrounds some of the key developments in the area, exploring historical, doctrinal and theoretical issues in the field while at the same time developing new ideas and perspectives around intellectual property and food. The collection will be a useful resource in leading further discussion and debate about intellectual property law and food.

    Acknowledgements, Jay Sanderson, Charles Lawson; Part I Observations from the Laboratory; Chapter 2 Implications of Advances in Molecular Genetic Technology for Food Security and Ownership, Robert J. Henry; Part II Public Research and Plant Germplasm: Intellectual Property and Food Security; Chapter 3 Reconceptualizing Intellectual Property to Promote Food Security, Brad Sherman; Chapter 4 Intellectual Property Norm Setting in ex situ Plant Germplasm Access and Benefit Sharing Arrangements, Charles Lawson; Chapter 5 Open Access Seeds and Breeds: The Role of the Commons in Protecting Farmers' and Livestock Keepers' Rights and Food Security, Brendan Tobin; Part III Social, Economic and Political Aspects of Food and Intellectual Property; Chapter 6 Why Didn't an Equivalent to the US Plant Patent Act of 1930 Emerge in Britain? Historicizing the Boundaries of Un-Patentable Innovation, Berris Charnley; Chapter 7 Changing the Recipe: Food Security and Other Socio-Economic Considerations in AgriculturalIntellectual Property, Food and Practice; Chapter 8 Can Intellectual Property Help Feed the World? Intellectual Property, the PLUMPYFIELD® Network and a Sociological Imagination, Jay Sanderson; Chapter 9 Geographical Indications and Agricultural Community Development: Is the European Model Appropriate for Developing Countries?, Graham Dutfield; Chapter 10 Patent-Busting: The Public Patent Foundation, Gene Patents and the Seed Wars, Matthew Rimmer;

    Biography

    Charles Lawson is a recognized expert in the international scholarship on intellectual property, and in particular the issues of access and benefit sharing under international law. Jay Sanderson is a recognized scholar on intellectual property and plants. Since taking up his current position his scholarship also considers the complex and contingent relations within intellectual property and food.

    ’This book is an excellent resource for those mapping the increasingly complex links between intellectual property rights (IPRs) and food security. It both highlights the potential of IPRs to enhance agricultural production, and analyses some of the challenges raised by IPRs that are key for the future of global agriculture.’ Elise Perset, General Counsel, CGIAR Consortium ’Dealing with the relevance and expansive nature of intellectual property on food and food-related developments, this book is a welcome, multi-disciplinary contribution to the subject. In conceptual and practical terms, it facilitates a better grasp of the challenges and policy responses.’ Pedro Roffe, International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, Switzerland