Intellectual Property Resources for International Development in Agriculture and Health

A symposium at the 2004 AAAS Annual Meeting
Friday, February 13, 2004

Since the early 1980s, agricultural researchers have increasingly obtained intellectual property rights to their inventions, and licensed or transferred ownership of these rights to commercial interests. This has had many benefits, but the practice of granting exclusive licenses, combined with the increased concentration of IP in a limited number of firms, is also encumbering and ultimately limiting research opportunities to develop novel subsistence crops for the developing world, an activity primarily undertaken within by the public sector. Public research institutions are finding that in many cases, they have to negotiate agreements with multiple IP owners, a process that is time consuming, expensive, and uncertain. As a result, potentially useful research products and tools are not as widely shared and disseminated as in the past. Interestingly, the situation in agricultural research and development is paralleled in the development of so-called "orphan" drugs that have little commercial market in the developed world but have the potential to dramatically improve health care in the developing world. As with subsistence crops in developing countries, a need exists, but the market that these orphan drugs represent does not justify commercial exploitation by industry but the public sector is not equipped with IP clearances to undertake the necessary research and development. Over the last two years a number of creative partnerships have been developed to resolve intellectual property "logjams" that have impeded research and development targeted to international development in agriculture and health care. Some of these partnerships are entirely within the private sector, others are entirely within the public sector and others are beginning to reflect true private/public partnerships. A central theme, however, has been a move towards collective action to overcome intellectual property barriers for clearly articulated humanitarian goals.

Presentations

• Symposium Introduction "IP Landscape and Public Sector Research" Stephen Hansen, AAAS
• "Public Sector Intellectual Property Resources for Agriculture" Allan Bennett, UC Davis
• "Innovative IP for novel and affordable TB Drugs" Gerald Siuta, The Global Alliance for Tuberculosis Drug Development
• "Global Sustainability through the Development of Food and Health Care Systems" David Zilberman, University of California, Berkeley
• "Intellectual Property and Malaria Vaccines: Help or Hindrance?" Melinda Morree, Malaria Vaccine Initiative
• "Private Sector Support for Agricultural Development: The African Agricultural Technology Foundation" David Fischoff, Monsanto Company