modern biotechnology, was nonexclusively licensed under reasonable financial terms, a
strategy that resulted in licenses to 468 companies (Feldman et al. 2005). Broad innovation
was encouraged through access to the key enabling technologies; and many companies
became successful by using these tools to develop proprietary products based on other
patented technologies that they exclusively held. Ultimately, the licensing strategy
enabled $35 billion in worldwide product sales and brought in $255 million in licensing
revenues (Feldman 2005).
In agricultural biotechnology today, the innovation system needs a balance of both
exclusive and nonexclusive access to patented technologies to effectively support new
crop development and to provide both commercial growers and subsistence farmers with
the best genetic technology possible for their crops. The ownership of critical intellectual
property and the rights to practice or use certain technologies is becoming a major issue
confronting researchers in this area. Even purely fundamental academic research is not pro-
tected by an “experimental use” exception from patent infringement and may become
increasingly entangled in issues involving access to IP rights (Eisenberg 2003). While
the importance of intellectual property in agriculture is becoming better recognized in
both the public and private sectors, many researchers, businesspeople, R&D decision-
makers, and policymakers are still relatively uninformed about how to find, understand,
and utilize IP information, including published patents and patent applications. In this
chapter we will provide an overview of the major issues and what a research scientist
needs to be aware of when navigating the IP landscape of agricultural biotechnology.
14.2 Intellectual Property Defined
Intellectual property is a legally created form of property that applies to your ideas or the
“products of your mind” and gives the owner a set of rights that are comparable to tangible
property rights. The concept of intellectual property was insightfully addressed by Thomas
Jefferson when he said
Figure 14.1.Annual trends in plant biotechnology patents issued by the US Patent and Trademark
Office between 1969 and 2005.
14.2. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DEFINED 327