Seed activism : patent politics and litigation in the global south Introduction Brazil India and intellectual property in agriculture Challenging royalties on roundup ready soybean Bt cotton : the patent that never was Who owns bt Brinjal Patent politics and legal activism Conclusion. How lawsuits around intellectual property in Brazil and India are impacting the patentability of plants and seeds farmers rights and the public interest. Over the past decade legal challenges have arisen in the Global South over patents on genetically modified crops. In this ethnographic study Karine E. Peschard explores the effects of these disputes on peoples lives while uncovering the role of power—material institutional and discursive—in shaping laws and legal systems. The expansion of corporate intellectual property (IP) she shows negatively impacts farmers rights and by extension the right to food since small farms produce the bulk of food for domestic consumption. Peschard sees emerging a new legal common sense concerning the patentability of plant related inventions as well as a balance among IP farmers rights and the public interest. Peschard examines the strengthening of IP regimes for plant varieties the consolidation of the global biotech industry the erosion of agrobiodiversity and farmers dispossession. She shows how litigants question the legality of patents and private IP systems implemented by Monsanto for royalties on three genetically modified crop varieties Roundup Ready soybean in Brazil and Bt cotton and Bt eggplant in India. Peschard argues that these private IP systems have rendered moot domestic legislation on plant variety protection and farmers rights. This unprecedented level of corporate concentration in such a vital sector raises concerns over the erosion of agricultural biodiversity farmers rights and livelihoods food security and ultimately the merits of extending IP rights to higher life forms such as plants.