Schrödinger’s Rose: Indeterminacy and Contingent Futures in the Plant Variety Rights System of Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

Abstract Plant variety rights, a somewhat obscure and technical form of intellectual property, are often assumed to be conceptually uncomplicated. The two essential purposes of plant variety rights laws are typically to incentivise the creation of novel varieties with useful characteristics and to reward breeders for these efforts. These rationales are seldom questioned. However, plant variety rights regimes might be better understood as open-ended, containing multiple potential futures that are innate though they may never be fully realised. This article reviews a series of Parliamentary debates over the three generations of plant variety rights legislation in Aotearoa New Zealand. The article shows that over time, rather than remain static the perceived rationale for recognising intellectual property for plants in New Zealand has shifted and expanded. Justifications have grown from a narrow focus on supporting a nascent, export-oriented horticultural industry to the endorsement of a broad platform that aims both to promote domestic agricultural innovation and to achieve Indigenous sovereignty over culturally significant plants. The prior indeterminacy that characterises plant variety rights legislation in Aotearoa invokes the metaphor of Schrödinger’s cat, in that these laws’ multiple futures are contingent and may resolve themselves differently depending on whose aspirations are formally recognised and applied in practice. The nature of plant variety rights is therefore spectral, pervaded – both implicitly and sometimes overtly – by the ambitions of different people, as well as by the types of plants and ways of knowing that these laws exclude.