An overview of intellectual property rights in relation to agricultural biotechnology

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The majority of the population in developing nations depends on agriculture. Agricultural biotechnology involves genetic modification and promises a number of important benefits, such as improving agricultural yields by increasing the resistance of crops to pests and facilitating them to flourish in harsh natural environments, improving the productivity of crops, and reducing pesticide use. Also, concerns have been raised about the potential negative impacts of genetic modification. To promote research and development in agricultural biotechnology, intellectual property rights (IPRs) are one of the primary tools. Based on the fact that high investment is required to develop new genetically modified (GM) technologies and products, stronger intellectual property protection is necessary to stimulate research and to allow recovery of investment. As international rules increasingly raise the level of intellectual property protection, there is rising concern about the potential negative impacts on the dissemination of knowledge and important products, further Research and Development, food security, and the conservation of biodiversity among other fundamental areas of public policy. It is thus an important policy challenge to determine application of laws, rules and legislations to agricultural biotechnology. IPRs are woven into innovations, enable entrepreneurship and they allow the leveraging of private resources for resolving the problems of hunger and poverty. Keywords: Biotechnology, intellectual property rights, patents, genetic modification