Debate on Biotechnology and Intellectual Property Rights: Protecting the Interests of Third World Farmers and Scientists

The debate on protection of intellectual property rights of the companies and scientific labs developing technologies through biotechnological means or otherwise has been highly surcharged with the emotions. I have argued in this paper that developing countries like India should negotiate this subject with the position of strength and not weakness. In the case of biotechnology, the technology gap is the shortest to bridge compared to most industrial technologies. By compromising on Industrial front, we could gain a lot on biotechnological front. We should simultanesouly refuse to accept the idea that biodiversity is the global common heritage. We should in fact document and patent various land races and other germ plasm in the name of local communities. The land races do not survive by chance or accident. Conscious effort and attention of local communities makes that possible. We should accept the principle that innovators wherever they are and who so ever they are must be protected and compensated. It is natural that this protection would extend to third world scientists and farmers too. We do not agree with those who think that by extending IPRs to crop varieties we would lose the game to MNCs. On the contrary, by protecting the rights of local communities, we would be able to stake the right of third world farmers to have a share in the global profits of Multinational seed companies. The contentions of those dominating the technological frontiers are given in part one of the paper. The concerns of the developing countries are mentioned in Part Two. The alternative ways in which we can operalionalize the concept of Farmers’ Rights and compensate them for their innovations and intellectual property rights are discussed in part three. Issues for further discussion have been listed in part four.