Taking a global viewpoint, this volume addresses issues arising from recent developments in the enduring and topical debates over Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and their relationship to Intellectual Property (IP). The work examines changing responses to the growing acceptance and prevalence of GMOs. Drawing together perspectives from several of the leading international scholars in this area, the contributions seek to break away from analysis of safety and regulation and examine the diversity of ways the law and GMOs have become entangled. This collection presents the start of a much broader engagement with GMOs and law. As GMO technology becomes increasingly more complex and embedded in our lives, this volume will be a useful resource in leading further discussion and debate about GMOs in academia, in government and among those working on future policy.

Master's Thesis from the year 2002 in the subject Law - Miscellaneous, grade: merit - 67%, University of Exeter (International Business Law), language: English, abstract: The discovery of the double- helical structure of DNA in 19532 has led to an exponential growth of related new technologies and has generated enormous financial research costs3. To accumulate these sums the biotech industry is particularly motivated by the attraction of patent protection4. Patent regimes have been challenging boundaries between human invention and nature and have become an important and controversial tool for protecting biotechnological knowledge. The issues covered range from patenting of gene sequences5 from lower organisms such as bacteria up to higher life forms as living animals6. Patent practice has become increasingly broad7. One of the jurisdictions still strong enough to resist the Western trend to extend the coverage of new-life forms is surprisingly Canada being the neighbour to the most inventive U.S. biotechnological industry8. Subject of this work are GMOs destined for marketing on global level, i.e. foodstuff and agricultural products9 but pharmaceuticals and other products as well as far as natural ingredients are concerned. Myriads of novel GMOs could be developed and released into the global environment to help to solve severe shortages or problems in agriculture, energy or medicine by providing more and better food, alternative fuel or new and more effective pharmaceuticals10. The debate is fuelled by unfulfilled expectations concerning the ongoing WTO round, statements of NGO activists11 and new projects of multinational corporations and more intense in Europe than in North America.

Advances in agricultural genomics could help address pressing global issues such as world hunger. However, overlapping and inconsistent intellectual property and biosafety regimes – collectively referred to as the “Intellectual Property–Regulatory Complex” – create significant, and often conflicting, barriers to developing and commercializing new agricultural biotechnology. The authors of this collection explore how this Complex impacts innovation in ways that cannot be appreciated when individual regimes are examined in isolation. They then propose solutions that would meet the objectives of the current intellectual property and biosafety regimes while enabling innovation in the field of agricultural genomics.

This open access book analyses intellectual property codification and innovation governance in the development of six key industries in India and China. These industries are reflective of the innovation and economic development of the two economies, or of vital importance to them: the IT Industry; the film industry; the pharmaceutical industry; plant varieties and food security; the automobile industry; and peer production and the sharing economy. The analysis extends beyond the domain of IP law, and includes economics and policy analysis. The overarching concern that cuts through all chapters is an inquiry into why certain industries have developed in one country and not in the other, including: the role that state innovation policy and/or IP policy played in such development; the nature of the state innovation policy/IP policy; and whether such policy has been causal, facilitating, crippling, co-relational, or simply irrelevant. The book asks what India and China can learn from each other, and whether there is any possibility of synergy. The book provides a real-life understanding of how IP laws interact with innovation and economic development in the six selected economic sectors in China and India. The reader can also draw lessons from the success or failure of these sectors.

A basic discussion of patent rights as they apply to genetically engineered plants, presented in the context of conventional plant breeding.