Managing Intellectual Property to Foster Agricultural Development

Over the past decades, consideration of IPRs has become increasingly important in many areas of agricultural development, including foreign direct investment, technology transfer, trade, investment in innovation, access to genetic resources, and the protection of traditional knowledge. The widening role of IPRs in governing the ownership of—and access to—innovation, information, and knowledge makes them particularly critical in ensuring that developing countries benefit from the introduction of new technologies that could radically alter the welfare of the poor. Failing to improve IPR policies and practices to support the needs of developing countries will eliminate significant development opportunities. The discussion in this note moves away from policy prescriptions to focus on investments to improve how IPRs are used in practice in agricultural development. These investments must be seen as complementary to other investments in agricultural development. IPRs are woven into the context of innovation and R&D. They can enable entrepreneurship and allow the leveraging of private resources for resolving the problems of poverty. Conversely, IPRs issues can delay important scientific advancements, deter investment in products for the poor, and impose crippling transaction costs on organizations if the wrong tools are used or tools are badly applied. The central benefit of pursuing the investments outlined in this note is to build into the system a more robust capacity for strategic and flexible use of IPRs tailored to development goals

Priorities for synthesis research in ecology and environmental science

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank the National Science Foundation grant #1940692 for financial support for this workshop, and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) and its staff for logistical support.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Priorities for synthesis research in ecology and environmental science

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank the National Science Foundation grant #1940692 for financial support for this workshop, and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) and its staff for logistical support.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Issues in IP management to support open access in collaborative innovation models

Building Web–based collaborative environments to encourage innovation in patentable technology provides different challenges than those found in the realm of copyrightable material. Cyberinfrastructure can be designed to encourage a free exchange of information and ideas that produces well–documented benefits for collaborators. But this may come at the cost of foregone patent rights, as the disclosure of information can limit options to patent. If the goal is open access, though, some argue that the predisposition toward the public domain is an important element. This essay argues that achieving openness in fields of patentable technology may require cyberinfrastructure that is designed to accommodate flexibility in the management of intellectual property. First, the potential value of patents is explored as they support the goal of open access. For some technologies, collaborative cyberinfrastructure may inadvertently restrict open access because placing a technology in the public domain removes the leverage a patent owner has to influence downstream activity. Second, this paper considers the potential role of defensive publishing in cyberinfrastructure; a lack of control over how the inventions are published may make it easier for others to surround the published technology with patents, ultimately limiting open access. In some instances, strategic defensive publishing may be warranted in order to place technologies more securely in the public domain. Both of these discussions explore the likelihood that designing cyberinfrastructure for innovation in patentable technology fields demands a keen understanding of the interface between the public domain and patents, and also a balance between retaining options for IP management and enabling the fluidity of collaboration

PIPRA: A Resource for Collaborative Intellectual Property Management in Agriculture

86-91Recent decades have seen an increase in intellectual property protection worldwide. Accompanying this trend, there have been growing concerns about how best to encourage the development and distribution of technologies that benefit developing countries within this new and rapidly changing landscape of intellectual property rights (IPRs). PIPRA (The Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture) addresses these issues in the area of agriculture by mobilizing collaborative support of a wide range of public sector institutions worldwide. In addition to this broad base of institutional support, PIPRA’s molecular biology labs and its network of pro bono IP attorneys together allow a coordination of scientific and legal resources that is crucial for the provision of practical IP services to support advances in developing country agriculture

A Climate Coffee Chat, Post-Food Systems Summit Dialogue North America

The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), life science company Bayer and Columbia University's Earth Institute organized an online Food Systems Summit Dialogue (FSSD) event with stakeholders based in North America. With over 100 eager participants, the aim of this event was to share perspectives, understand positions and elevate proposals that have the potential to transform food systems under changing climate. Walter Baethgen (Senior Research Scientist, International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Columbia University) and Sara Boettiger (Senior Vice President, Bayer Crop Science) meet over coffee to chat about their takeaways from the dialogue, and how we can take things forward

Building Pathways out of Rural Poverty through Investments in Agricultural Information Systems (WorldAgInfo Final Report, complete)

WorldAgInfo Project Final Report (complete)This report summarizes the results of activities undertaken as part of the 21st Century Agricultural Education and Information Systems Project (WorldAgInfo), May to December 2007, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and implemented by A.R. Mann Library, Cornell University. Project activities included consultations with staff of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; site visits to South Asia and Africa by members of the project's Design Team; two international workshops convened in Ithaca, New York, and Livingstone, Zambia, to bring together policy makers, scholars, instructional technology and curriculum specialists, and private sector representatives; literature reviews on topics relevant to smallholder agriculture in Africa and South Asia; and smallholder interviews conducted on site in India, Sri Lanka, Mali and Zambia by agriculture undergraduate and graduate students. The report offers a wealth of ideas for innovations in agricultural education and information systems, pulling together the creative thinking of the many people who participated in the project, which included members from the fields of agriculture, information technology, and education.Bill and Melinda Gates Foundatio