In this article, we present a case study about the potential for new technology paradigms to drive intellectual property regimes towards obsolescence. The subject of the study, plant variety protection, is a little-understood intellectual property regime that mixes copyright and patent concepts....

We examine the welfare impact of different intellectual property protection (IPP) regimes in private sector seed research and development (R&D). We take into account the period after expiration of legal IPP, and require simultaneous equilibrium in markets for R&D, seeds, and final product....