Knowledge is considered to be the product of individual creativity, based on western scientific thought and systems of knowledge creation and gathering whereby the resource base is merely viewed as 'raw material'. In this paradigm IPRs represent the property rights to the products of mind, thereby resulting in knowledge and creativity being so narrowly defined that the creativity of nature and non-western knowledge systems have been ignored. The two categories of IPRs that have a direct impact on the erosion of prior rights of communities, are patents and plant breeders' rights. Plant breeders' rights negate the contribution of Third World farmers as breeders and hence undermine farmers' rights. Patents allow the usurpation of indigenous knowledge as a western invention through minor tinkering or trivial translation.
Convention represents a western devised form of plant variety protection, other than patenting.
But according to the 1991 Revision of the UPOV Convention, newly introduced clauses severely restrict farmers' rights by removing all rights for them to save seed for sowing for the following year, as well as removing researchers' rights to save the seed of new protected varieties. The protected variety may still be used as an initial source of variation for the creation of new varieties but such new varieties cannot be marketed or sold without the plant breeders' rights' holder allowing it. There now exists very little difference in restrictions set by Plant Breeders' Rights and that set by patents for farmers. UPOV is a monopoly system that embodies the philosophy of the industrialised north who want to protect the interests of corporate biotechnology and powerful seed companies. If India does not evolve its own sui generis system centred on community intellectual rights of farmers and adopts the UPOV model, a rights regime will have been created that protects the rights of the seed industry but offers no protection to the rights of farmers.