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Intellectual Property Institutions For Plant Breeding, Richard K. Perrin, Lilyan Fulginiti

Lilyan E. Fulginiti Publications

Intellectual property rights for crop plant material should in principle increase social welfare by increasing private research investments to a level closer to the social optimum. In the US, plant patents were first introduced in 1930 by legislation that applied only to asexually reproduced plants. This was followed in 1970 by the weaker plant breeders' rights legislation (PBR) for sexually reproduced plants. Judicial decisions in 1980 and 1985, however, extended much stronger utility patent protection to plant materials. Here we examine theoretical welfare implications of weak PBR vs strong utility patents in a North-South context of technology transfer in agriculture …