However, in order to guarantee that Southern farmers access to best planting material is not hindered, he argues, a distinction should be made in patent laws between developing and developed countries. Though there are several issues which should be addressed concerning patents, fundamentally we must ask whether patents help or hinder farmers access to the best material for planting in their fields each season. If patents hinder that process, then we should be wary of them. If they help it, we should welcome them, and if they are irrelevant to what happens, then we should not presume to speak on behalf on farmers. Patents on genes and other biological material are of course widely sought after in the developed world by both public institutes and private sector companies.
Ambiguity is a structural feature of any language, and by extension, of any law.
Any legal language must strive for precision. In fact, patents on genetic material are highly specific with regards to claims and to the material to which they refer. In the same spirit it is suspect to claim that as patent law was originally developed for obvious inventions not found in nature, that any other kind of invention is excluded from protection. Laws change all the time as society encounters new situations not confronted by the law s framers. In any case it seems intuitive that no private sector company is going to put its investors money into projects for which an adequate return cannot be assured.