As patents and other forms of intellectual property become more pervasive in the next generation of biotechnologies, designing policies and practices to ensure sufficient freedom to operate (i.e., the ability to practice or use an innovation) will be crucial for non-profit research agencies,...

The United States was the first country in the world to explicitly offer intellectual property protection for plant varieties. Beginning in 1930, asexually reproduced plants were afforded plant patent protection, in 1970 sexually propagated plants could be awarded plant variety protection...

Investments in R&D and agricultural innovations have been fundamental to long-term economic growth worldwide. But global resource allocation has been uneven, with some developing countries closing in on developed-world scientific capacities, others regaining ground lost over the past decade or...

Proponents tout the positive incentive-to-innovate effects of intellectual property rights (IPRs), while others maintain that the expanding subject matter and geographical extent of IPRs are stifling crop research, especially research and development (R&D) dealing with developing-country crop...

A biotechnology revolution is proceeding in tandem with international proliferation of intellectual property regimes and rights. Does the intellectual property impede agricultural research conducted in, or of consequence for, developing countries? This question has important spatial dimensions...

As patents and other forms of intellectual property become more pervasive in the next generation of biotechnologies, designing polices and practices to ensure sufficient freedom to operate (i.e., the ability to practice or use an innovation) will be crucial for non-profit agencies in the...

For more than a century, plant breeders in government-funded research centers have sought out crop varieties with characteristics that might help poor farmers in developing countries grow more food. They have painstakingly bred and cross-bred these varieties through generations to achieve a...