How Can Software Licensing Help Farmers in the Developing World?
Answer: By providing a model for licensing agreements that can protect the farmers’ intellectual property rights in the seed that they use.
I recently posted on the problem of biopiracy — the appropriation of genetic resources from developing nations by pharmaceutical and other companies. Similar concerns have been raised about agro-companies obtaining exclusive intellectual property rights in plant genetic resources that have been first developed and used by farmers in developing nations.
Fortunately, 3L Ryann Beck has come up with a clever solution that involves adapting the open source licencing systems commonly used for computer software. Under Ryann’s proposal, a nonprofit steward would obtain intellectual property rights in plant genetic materials on behalf of the farmers who developed them. Packages of the seeds would then be labeled with a “copy-left” license that would preclude purchasers from obtaining enforceable intellectual property rights in the seeds or derivatives of the seeds.
Ryann’s proposal is contained in a new paper on SSRN. Her paper got a nice write-up on the IPKat blog a few days ago, and is forthcoming in the Arizona Journal of Environmental Law and Policy. The abstract appears after the jump.