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3 - The Seed Wars and Intellectual Property Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2019

Anne Saab
Affiliation:
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva
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Summary

The struggle over intellectual property rights on seeds is often referred to as the ‘Seed Wars’. Debates surrounding climate-ready seeds are manifestations of the Seed Wars. While those who tell a neoliberal story of hunger contend that intellectual property rights are necessary incentives for technological innovation, food sovereignty advocates reject the application of intellectual property rights to seeds. However, these two positions on intellectual property rights are less dichotomous than they may appear at first sight when we examine the nuances of the arguments and the ways in which both parties invoke international law. Critics of climate-ready seeds direct most of their attention to the growing number of patent applications by a handful of large corporations, or ‘Gene Giants’. The food sovereignty narrative of hunger, moreover, seeks to resist the dominant neoliberal regime by positing rights of its own. The emphasis on this debate leaves little space to question even the fifth and final premise in what I identify as the pyramid of assumptions that upholds the dominant neoliberal narrative of hunger, namely the premise that intellectual property rights incentivize necessary innovation. Exploring how the struggle over intellectual property rights on seeds features in the narratives of hunger and how international law is invoked in these narratives, this chapter argues that international law contributes to upholding the assumption that intellectual property rights incentivize innovation in both the neoliberal narrative of hunger and the food sovereignty narrative of hunger.
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Narratives of Hunger in International Law
Feeding the World in Times of Climate Change
, pp. 84 - 110
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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