The Interaction Between Intellectual Property Rights and Open Innovation Processes Applied to Modern Plant Breeding
Abstract
The knowledge requirements and the need to generate new inventions in both products and processes of modern plant breeding are highly demanding and on the frontiers of science. There is no self-sufficient technological capacity in the public or private sector capable of completely dominating such undertakings. In this general framework, the processes of open innovation, both public/private, public/public and private/private, are key to success.
Despite the opportunities generated by open innovation processes applied to modern plant breeding, an increase in the innovation rate is not detected, as measured by the average increase in crop productivity. One possible explanation for this fact is that the genetic basis on which modern plant breeding is being supported has been significantly narrowed by a lack of utilization or underutilization of genetic resources.
Intellectual property rights are part of the variables of this complex equation and their application leads to three hypotheses that were tested against four real cases of open innovation applied in modern plant breeding in Argentina.
In no case it was observed that the suppression of intellectual property rights has been considered a tool to promote innovation (hypothesis #1). On the contrary, what was observed is that the innovation was oriented towards those products or processes capable of being managed in an innovative way by some current intellectual property system, although protection is limited by the speed of technological advance. An alternative solution (hypothesis #3), is that the legal framework to promote development should be reformulated in an integral way to adapt it to the developments of modern plant breeding under open innovation processes. The decision for one or the other alternative is critical since the innovation rate resulting from the crops will depend on it.
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Copyright (c) 2020 Miguel A. Rapela
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