Intellectual Property Rights and Food Security

Believing intellectual property rights (along with trade liberalization and improvements in agricultural productivity) to be the solution for food security in developing countries, Blakeney (intellectual property law, U. of London, UK) describes the ways in which he thinks it can do so. He discusses the role of intellectual property rights in incentivizing agricultural research and development; describes the international landscape of intellectual property and the approaches taken to the relationship between intellectual property rights, agricultural biotechnology, food security, and globalization by the World Trade Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the World Intellectual Property Organization and international development agencies; analyzes the role of plant variety rights in a food security context; examines efforts to construct an international regime to secure access to the genetic resources of the biodiverse countries of the South; considers the issues of farmers rights and protection of traditional knowledge; examines the intellectual property implications of the use of genetically modified crops; and looks at the competition law implications of patent licensing, patent pools, and patent thickets. Distributed in the US by Oxford U. Press. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Michael Blakeney is Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law at Queen Mary, University of London and Director of the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute. He is also Professor of Law at the University of Western Australia. He has held academic positions at a number of Universities in Australia and the UK and formerly worked in the Asia Pacific Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization. He is an arbitrator with the International Court of Arbitration.

Professor Blakeney has advised the Asian Development Bank, Consulting Group for International Agricultural Research, European Commission (EC), European Patent Office, Food and Agricultural Organization, World Bank, World Intellectual Property Organization and a number of university and public research institutes on technology transfer and management of intellectual property.