Biotechnology and Development Monitor, No. 35, p. 2-3. The development of technology is always related to the socio-economic context in which it takes place. One important aspect of the development of modern biotechnology, and especially genetic engineering, is its interrelation with the adaptation of intellectual property rights.
Inventors demand legal protection to achieve remuneration for the use of their creations.
In the case of seeds, a seed saved from the harvest of a patented crop makes the unwanted distribution of protected technologies possible and probable. Patents and plant breeders rights are legalistic approaches which try to channel the use in order to raise remuneration for the invention. Now, a biotechnological invention to control seed sterility makes it possible to enforce intellectual ownership of newly developed crops. The article on page 6 of this Monitor describes how the control of biological inventions included in the seed are likely to affect agricultural developments. This counterbalancing of impacts is not exclusively valid for crop development and seeds.