Question

Weekly summary GOF Chapter 4 Intellectual Property 4.4, 4.5 must be completed by 11:59 p.m. Use this space to sign into once a week. This is one way of knowing that you are being active in the course. At the end of the semester, I will use this to determine a portion of your participation grade.

How to Submit a Weekly Summary
1. Click the "Weekly Summary Week 6" link, when the "Submit Assignment" page appears, you are to type a 2 - 3 paragraph summary only with specifics about concepts you have read, practiced and learned. Use your textbook!

Answer 1

Ans 1 :Intellectual property (IP) is an idea that, when expressed in a tangible form, can be protected by law. Intellectual property rights (IPRs) can be broadly defined as legal rights established over creative or inventive ideas. Such legal rights generally allow right holders to exclude the unauthorized commercial use of their creations/inventions by third persons.

The IPRs on plants were among the most controversial issues in the long history of intellectual property protection. Traditionally, in the majority of cases, plants were excluded from national and international IPR regimes.The IPRs in plant varieties and other life forms and processes generally have evoked opposition from diverse groups for socio-economic, ethical, and environmental reasons.There had been deep-rooted social antipathy towards the consolidation of commercial interest in food production. It is viewed as inappropriate as it may restrict the traditional agricultural practices of seed saving and exchange. Particularly patent on plants was described by some as a design that will “reduce rural population to beggars.” From ethical point of view, the morality of transferring genes from one species to another and manipulating what God has created has been questioned. The possibility of someone owning a life or part of it is severely criticized. From environmental point of view, some argue that, the IPRs on plants have provided perverse incentives for erosion of genetic diversity. According to this view, the seed companies have a propensity to concentrate their research on commonly used high value crops and develop varieties that can be grown as widely as possible that would lead to a spread of monoculture.

Ans 2 : The knowledge of breeding techniques in agriculture in the development of new or improved varieties of plants is one form of an intellectual property right, little recognized and probably for that reason not effectively protected in a way like other forms of such rights.18 However, for almost all of the human history, farming and crop improvement were carried out by the same people and in the same places, by farmers and indigenous people on their own land. The separation of the two activities is very recent phenomenon, starting in the 19th century, where the first professional breeders emerged and farmers abandoned or were forced out of breeding as an activity. This separation is an ongoing process in many developing countries and in some areas has hardly even begun. Since Neolithic times, farmers have set aside some of their harvested seeds for replanting. They selected such seeds, whether consciously or unintentionally, on the basis that the plants producing them possessed desirable traits such as high yields, disease resistance, or drought or frost tolerance. Over the generations, this practice resulted in ever increasing quantities of locally adopted varieties known as ‘landraces’19, ‘folk varieties’ or ‘farmers’ varieties’.20 In North America and Europe the situation has been changed from late 19th century as the profession of farming became a separate one from seed production. The emerging seed producers started to select from the existing materials to increase their productivity .

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