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Dissertation
Immaterialgüter- und Wettbewerbsrecht

Limits to Patent Protection of Crop Biotechnology for Sustainable Agriculture in Europe

Self-replicating biotechnologies create new challenges for patent protection. It still needs to be clarified whether limitations to patent law serve their purposes in the field of self-replicating technologies, which are to enhance competition by innovation, facilitate public access to information and prevent restraints of trade.

Letzte Änderung: 30.08.17

The focus of the research is on the limitations to patent law protection which is applicable to self-replicating technologies. The limitations to the intellectual property protection are pronounced louder in recent years. The limits to patent protection could be found in the IP system itself which are called internal tools or in other legal systems outside of IP which are called external tools. The scope of the research is going to be delimited to intellectual property protection of plant inventions. The agriculture, which is an important field of economy, has been intertwined with the knowledge economy for several years, due to the scientific and technological developments in the field of biotechnology. Therefore, some results of the efforts of the agricultural biotechnology could be the subject matter of the intellectual property rights.


The agricultural biotechnology is a research intensive industry and it requires a high allocation of time and money. In accordance with that, there are many patent filings and granted patents covering certain technologies. As a result, the undeniable pace of the technological development poses a remarkable challenge to various interests of producers and users of the technology. Each plant related invention or plant variety have their particularities depending on their biology and on other factors like climate conditions and population density in one geographical location. For instance, vegetables could differ from seeds or ornamental plants in particular features. With this purpose, we limit the subject matter to cereal crops and more specifically to wheat for reasons that the European Union is one of the largest cereal producers in the world and the wheat is the most widely cultivated agricultural crop in Europe.


The overall goal of this research is to look for a balance of interests where the property rights of the technology producer already supersede some other interests like competition by innovation as well as social benefits such as nutrion, public health and environmental protection.  Patent law should not deprive the patent owner of the opportunity to get a fair reward for his innovation, and it should not undermine the innovation incentives. At the same time, it must ensure that innovation, competition, efficiency and consumer welfare are not adversely affected. For that reason, ways to incorporate different interests into patent protection scheme will be the guiding point of the study. In this research project, it is aimed to propose an efficient solution to current problems resulting from the specificities of the nature of self-replicating biotechnologies.

Personen

Doktorand/in

Ali Seyhan Ugurlu

Doktorvater/-mutter

Prof. Dr. Josef Drexl

Forschungsschwerpunkte

Schutzgrenzen im Immaterialgüterrecht