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W. E. SIEBECK
The rule of free exchange is still observed by major genebanks in the industrial world. As recently
as 1990, the U.S. voted into law that genetic material assembled by its National Genetic Resources
Program is freely available upon request 8 .
Under intellectual property protection, research collaborations will be different. Research
information will flow less freely. In the laboratory and at the greenhouse bench, record keeping
requirements will be more exacting. Publication may be delayed until the potential for commercial
benefits has been assessed which would justify intellectual property protection. Yet, considering
the cost of intellectual property protection, only a fraction of innovations will in the end be so
protected.
Will intellectual property protection actually spur research as many argue? lt will allow, and make
possible, very expensive research. Development of a drug at the average cost of more than $250
million would hardly be possible without intellectual property protection. However, for improved
plant material, particularly food crops, the case for intellectual property protection as an incentive
to research is less clear.
2 Why Then Abandon a Policy That Works?
Although it has served the interests of the international research community well, the free
exchange system is under siege. Pressures come from the developing countries. There are several
reasons for this:
1) The advent of biotechnology has led to broad acceptance of intellectual property protection
of genetically manipulated plant material. Developing countries are concerned that genetic
material originating from their territories, once improved through breeding and research in
industrial countries, will be protected as intellectual property, and no longer be freely available
to them. Because they provided the original input on which improvements were built, they
argue that they be given a share in the commercial profits.
2) Developing countries are realizing the importance of unexplored germplasm as input into
modern breeding programs, particularly since biotechnology has made possible the transfer
of genetic traits across species; while they themselves continue to depend on technologies
generated in the North in these areas. They have discovered that they are holding a bargaining
chip in the form of raw germplasm of which today's still untapped resources are primarily
located in centers of biological diversity on their territories.
3) The free exchange system gave developing countries the finished varieties to grow the food
to feed their increasing populations, but did not succeed in giving them the technology to
8
etc. 1632(a)(4) of Public Law 101-624 of November 28, 1990 reads: "The Secretary (of Agriculture),
shall (4) make available upon request, without charge and without regard to the country from which such
request originates, the genetic material which the program assembles".