• Intellectual property rights

Intellectual property rights

The development of new technologies, together with changes in institutional environments toward privatisation of research outputs, has given scientists different incentives to disseminate their research outputs. This paper discusses the recent trends in plant transformation research by examining patent and journal publication data during the last decade. The paper aims to provide insights on how research outputs and scientific knowledge have been generated and disseminated with the changes in research environments.

The paper states that technological breakthroughs in the areas of genomics and bioinformatics might have contributed to the overall increase in research activities. This was reflected in the overall increase in the number of both journal and patent publications. On the other hand, the changes in institutional environments led to a rapid surge in patenting worldwide. The paper argues that both technological and institutional changes have contributed to the recent increases in patents in the agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation technology.

The paper wonders whether researchers in developing countries (DCs) actively improve and apply the fundamental technology for local needs. Or whether researchers in developed countries continue to improve the fundamental technology, and DCs are simply early adapters of the applied technology. Consequently, it finds that the research in the area of plant transformation has shifted from fundamental to applied research, and from journal publication to patents. Moreover, the paper highlights the rapid rise of the role of DCs in applied research in crop improvement, which reflects significant knowledge dissemination from developed countries to DCs. The paper finally points out some challenges posed by the increasing shift toward patenting of research outputs:

• patents tend to limit access to the technology, since they require users to obtain a licensing agreement with the patent holder
• public sector institutes, which use others’ proprietary technologies without acquiring formal license, are increasingly vulnerable to patent infringement claims
• there has been a small movement toward open access to technology in the biotechnology area, similar to open-source projects in the software industry
• multiple patent claims in fundamental technologies and limited freedom to operate may slow down the utilisation of these technologies and increase the transaction costs of developing new transgenic crops
  

The paper lastly concludes that the increasing use of proprietary protection of research outputs may have a significant future impact on knowledge dissemination. Therefore, it deems that the role of the public research community is critical in terms of the success of the open-source movement.

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