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Agricultural microbes have become an attractive target for patenting, but the lack of a consistent global patent regime and increasingly heated debates over microbial ownership rights are barriers to the development of this resource.
The development of original research requires tacit as well as explicit knowledge, which allows for the establishment of new epistemic trajectories with novel epistemic horizons. Much of the tacit knowledge involved in the innovation process can be transmitted as explicit knowledge through the patent document.
The common strategy of evergreening using patents and other exclusivity periods likely contributes to the total incentives that justify a pharmaceutical company's investment in a new drug.