Cultivating Innovation aims at increasing public awareness of the role of intellectual property in science with a special focus on plant science and farming. This aim intersects with those of similar initiatives supported by other universities. One of these initiatives is the seminar “Biopatents. Seeds as commodity and as a public good” organized by the Institute Technology – Theology – Natural Sciences of the University of Munich. Between Sep. 29 – Oct. 2, academics, researchers, and business representatives met near Weilheim in Oberbayern (Southern Bavaria) to discuss legal, ethical, and social aspects of patents in agriculture. Insulated in the midst of the beautiful Bavarian forest, experts from different disciplines could focus on presenting and debating controversial aspects of biopatents for today’s agriculture system. Industry representatives and biologists illustrated intellectual property issues in protecting innovations in a business firm and university context. Lawyers explained some of the challenges that new plant breeding techniques pose to biopatentability and questioned the role of patents in stimulating plant breeding activities as well as biodiversity conservation within the current legal framework in Europe. The role of biopatents on research, biodiversity conservation, and economic development was further questioned by philosophers, sociologists, and agricultural economists who addressed some negative effects of patents for farming and the need to find an alternative to the patent system for incentivizing agricultural innovation.
These discussions showed that there is a need to integrate legal, ethical, and social considerations in the general discourse on the patentability of biological material. Integration requires an understanding of all of these social sciences in order to offer a solution that could be expressed in common terms by all parties. What is interesting to note in this regard is that similar concerns were raised by experts of different disciplines but the definition of the questions and the solutions offered varied according to the scientific discipline. There was, however, common agreement that a multifaceted issue such as biopatents for agriculture requires an answer that takes account of different interests involved. In this regard, the suggestion of Dr. Andreas Popp – Vice President of the Global Intellectual Property division of BASF – appears quite realistic. Dr. Popp advocated in favor of an agricultural system that accommodates both the patent system and traditional farming as incentives for innovation and biodiversity conservation. The debate is, however, still open. The organizers of the seminar “Biopatents. Seeds as commodity and as public good” welcome you in a public event on March 2-3 in Tutzing to further the debate (in German).