License agreements: segmentation within the international market of seeds
| Autor | Lina María Díaz Vera |
| Cargo | Abogada de la Universidad Externado de Colombia con Maestría en Derecho con énfasis en Propiedad Intelectual y Derecho de la Competencia de London School of Economics. Abogada en la Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio en la Delegatura para la Protección de la Competencia, Bogotá, Colombia |
| Páginas | 14-40 |
19
lia aía díaz va
*
Introduction
Seeds are encapsulated plant embryos; their nature is to grow into new plants if there
are appropriate conditions. Producing food for the growing human population
demanded increases in yields that will hardly meet with the traditional methods
of plant breeding. Biotechnology provided the means to create seeds tolerant to
herbicides, weeds, and droughts. However, seeds are still seeds, they will reproduce
themselves and provide to their offspring the improvements genetically introduced
in them if they are properly nourished and regardless of the country they are in.
The self-replicating nature of seeds challenges the very essence of IP rights.
The rationale behind IP rights is to secure commercial exclusivity to recoup the
investment made in creating new technologies. But how to recover the huge in-
vestment made to identify a particular gene that will render a plant resistant to
herbicides, if by selling a single seed identical copies will naturally grow from it.
License agreements provide a legal solution. Instead of directly commercializing
final seeds, licensing the fragmented use of genetic traits, indispensable for the
creation of transgenic seeds, enables the worldwide distribution of technologies
as well as the charge of fees all along the value chain.
License agreements can be concluded between parties located in different
countries for the conduction of just one or several of the activities required to
introduce a gene into a cultivable seed. They may also include ancillary provisions
restricting the business of the licensee by fencing the territory where it is allowed
icene geeent: egenttion
within the intention ket
of eed
*
Abogada de la Universidad Externado de Colombia con Maestría en Derecho con
énfasis en Propiedad Intelectual y Derecho de la Competencia de London School of
Economics. Abogada en la Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio en la Delegatura
para la Protección de la Competencia, Bogotá, Colombia. Contacto:
lmdiazvera@gmail.com
Fecha de recepción: 22 de marzo de 2017. Fecha de aceptación: 18 de mayo de 2017. Para
citar el artículo: Díaz-Vera, L. M. “License agreements: Segmentation within the interna-
tional market of seeds”, Revista La Propiedad Inmaterial n.º 23, Universidad Externado de
Colombia, enero-junio 2017, pp. 19-45. doi: https://doi.org/10.18601/16571959.n23.02
20
.º 23 - -ju 2017 - . 19 - 45
Lina María Díaz Vera
to exploit the technology and prohibiting the importation or exportation of it.
Such restrictions might hinder the ordinary course of international trade as well
as the development of competing technologies. This paper aims to evaluate how
different jurisdictions have had address the anticompetitive practices employed to
enlarge the scope of national IP rights and capture fees through license agreements.
The first section of this paper describes the scene in the international market
of seeds, how it became such a concentrated market, the decisive role of IP rights
within it and the interplay between patent holders, plant breeders and farmers
within the market of seeds. Secondly, it will be explained why multinationals
impose restrictions on international markets; to then approach case law from
the European Union, United States, Brazil and Argentina, searching for different
solutions to this issue. The final section concludes.
1. The international market of seeds
1.1. General background
The advent of biotechnology reshaped the scene of agriculture1. The possibility of
modifying plant`s genetic information to make them resistant to pesticides and
herbicides increased agriculture’s productivity and profits. Artificial hybridization
and genetic use restriction technologies (gurts), overthrow natural barriers for the
entry, expansion, and consolidation of multinational enterprises in the seed market.
Artificial hybridization forces farmers to constantly purchase seeds to preserve the
levels of yields achieve in previous harvest, as those corps do not present the same
yield when reproduced from seeds of previous harvest2. Recently, gurts barriers
the movement of genes between plants, making possible to limit the expression
of desirable traits in the offspring of genetically modified corps3. Again, it forces
farmers to purchase seeds once and again. These technologies create a demand for
indispensable inputs that used to be freely available for farmers4.
The yield improvements brought by biotechnology incentivize the adoption of
these technologies. According with the International Service for the Acquisition of
Agri-biotech Applications, during the last 20 years the biotechnology implementa-
tion in agriculture increased crop yields by 22%, profits by 68%, and alleviated
1 Kloppenburg, Ralph Jack,
First the seed: The political economy of plant biotechnology,
University of Wisconsin Press,
2004.
2 Ibid., 93.
3 Lence, Sergio H. and others,
“
Welfare impacts of intellectual property protection in
the seed industry”
,
American Journal of Agricultural Economics,
2005,
87(4),
pp.
951-968.
4 Srinivasan, C. S. and Thirtle, Colin, “Potential economic impacts of terminator
technologies: policy implications for developing countries”, Environment and Development
Economics, 2003, 8(01), pp. 187-205. See also: Yusuf, Mansir, “Ethical issues in the use
of the terminator seed technology”, African Journal of Biotechnology, 2010, 9(52), pp.
8901-8904.
Para continuar leyendo
Solicita tu prueba
COPYRIGHT Universidad Externado de Colombia
