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An intellectual property clearinghouse for agricultural biotechnology

Nature Biotechnology volume 19, pages 1179–1180 (2001)Cite this article

Combining the best features of IP informatics services and online patent exchanges in an industry-specific collective rights organization could free up agricultural research by creating paths through the growing thickets of competing property claims.

The granting of intellectual property (IP) rights by governments over the components of life helps to provide a practical compromise between the public and private economic forces that drive agricultural biotechnology research. However, the effectiveness of a patent system turns on two factors: (1) the definition of what is patentable, to demarcate what may be claimed as private property and what should be left in the public domain; and (2) the mechanism to trade in patent rights, to efficiently move those rights to those able to create value with the technology while fairly compensating the inventors.

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  1. graduate researcher, professor, department of agricultural and resource economics, University of California, Berkeley

    Gregory Graff & David Zilberman

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  1. Gregory Graff
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  2. David Zilberman
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Graff, G., Zilberman, D. An intellectual property clearinghouse for agricultural biotechnology. Nat Biotechnol 19, 1179–1180 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt1201-1179

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt1201-1179

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