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Herring, Ronald J.; Kandlikar, Milind --- "Illicit Seeds: Intellectual Property and the Underground Proliferation of Agricultural Biotechnologies" [2009] ELECD 530; in Haunss, Sebastian; Shadlen, C. Kenneth (eds), "Politics of Intellectual Property" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: Politics of Intellectual Property

Editor(s): Haunss, Sebastian; Shadlen, C. Kenneth

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848443037

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: Illicit Seeds: Intellectual Property and the Underground Proliferation of Agricultural Biotechnologies

Author(s): Herring, Ronald J.; Kandlikar, Milind

Number of pages: 24

Extract:

4. Illicit seeds: intellectual
property and the underground
proliferation of agricultural
biotechnologies
Ronald J. Herring and Milind Kandlikar

Genetic engineering in agriculture has enabled new claims of intellectual
property in seeds; novelty claimed for patent protection has likewise
resonated with new claims of risk, supported by a global politics of oppo-
sition to biotechnology. Political framing of "GMOs" as bio-safety risks
has produced special regulation of some seeds. Both property claims and
regulation ­ which can function as intellectual property ­ increase incen-
tives for the emergence of underground seed markets, where evasion of
both regimes is possible. Contraband, "gray-market", "brown-bag" or
"creolized" transgenic seeds diffuse widely beneath the radar of both
firms and states in a global pattern about which little systematic is
known.
Some illicit seeds are frauds on farmers, analogous to fake medicines:
counterfeit seeds. Others build on rural grass-roots challenges to formal
intellectual property claims, and simultaneously constitute continuous
challenges to states' claims of special regulatory authority: stealth seeds.
Stealth seeds in particular necessitate rethinking of (1) conventional
wisdom on biotechnology's effect on rural income distribution; (2) con-
straints on agricultural development presented by restrictive bio-safety
and bio-property law; (3) political claims of both developmentalist and
anti-biotechnology advocacy networks.
The spread of illicit seeds renders problematic conventional wisdom on
(1) extent of diffusion of transgenic technology; (2) studies of yield effects
of transgenics that fail to measure counterfeit seeds; (3) income effects
for small farmers; (4) bio-safety agreements signed ...