The Use of GM Crops in Developing Countries
Control of and access to genetic modification technologies
6.1 Over the past 15 years, the expansion of the interests of the private sector in agriculture, particularly in the areas of GM crops and seed production, has resulted in much of the technology and germplasm being under commercial control. Universities in developed countries, encouraged by governments, have also increasingly sought patents to protect their inventions in this area.1 As a consequence, many discoveries and important technologies in plant biotechnology are no longer treated as public goods.2 Rather, they tend to be patented and licensed, often exclusively, to private companies working on major crops such as maize, soybean and cotton. The development of GM crops relevant to agriculture in the developing world will also require the negotiation of intellectual property rights (IPRs).
6.2 In making our recommendations in the 1999 Report, we recognised the potential of IPRs to constrain the development and commercial growing of crops important in developing countries. In particular we recommended that owners of patented technology should be encouraged to license their technology non-exclusively, that patent offices should avoid the granting of overly broad patents, and that the impact of patents on access to germplasm should be monitored (see paragraphs 3.47, 3.56 and 3.61 of the 1999 Report). In this chapter, we consider whether recent developments in IPRs demonstrate that the concerns underlying these recommendations were well-founded. We give particular attention to three aspects of IPRs which are crucial to the development of GM crops: use of Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs), licensing of patented technology, and access to germplasm.
Footnotes1 In the US, the Bayh-Dole Act (1998) gave universities and other public research institutions the rights to patent inventions funded by government research grants. Similar legislation is being applied in a number of industrialised countries.
2 Toenniessen G and Herdt R (2001) Intellectual property rights and food security. Available: http://www.genomics.cornell.edu/gmo/toenniessenpaper.html. Accessed on: 18 May 2003.