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25 - Diffusion and Distribution: The Impacts on Poor Countries of Technological Enforcement within the Biotechnology Sector

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

Timothy Swanson
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics, University College, London
Timo Goeschl
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Environmental and Resource Economics, University of Cambridge
Keith E. Maskus
Affiliation:
University of Colorado, Boulder
Jerome H. Reichman
Affiliation:
Duke University, North Carolina
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Summary

ABSTRACT

Technological enforcement of proprietary rights in biotechnological innovations will result in uniformly and universally enforced rights in those innovations. These rights should generate enhanced returns to innovation, but at the cost of reduced rates of diffusion. The study estimates the impacts of technological enforcement on different states, depending on their initial conditions, and finds that those countries on the technological frontier will gain most, while those furthest from the frontier must wait many years to receive any benefits whatsoever. Technological enforcement will generate additional benefits but at the cost of a regressive impact on world benefit distribution.

Introduction

This chapter considers the impacts of biotechnological changes that are likely to eliminate the need for the domestic application of intellectual property rights (IPRs) laws within the agricultural sector. New technologies will soon render it feasible to sell biological organisms (such as seeds and plants) that are unable to be reproduced by the purchaser. This innovation, once applied universally, will render unnecessary the domestic enforcement of seed patent legislation and plant variety protection. Then the restrictions on use inherent within those laws will be enforced technologically rather than legally, and these will have uniform impact on purchasers across the world. Technological enforcement will generate a globally uniform and universally enforceable system of proprietary rights.

What will be the impact of this movement away from a world of IPRs and toward a world of technologically enforced rights in innovations?

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