We are trying to find as many collaborators as possible to discuss their views on intellectual property and its relations with their (biological) science. At present we are struggling to find strong partners from within private industry - I wonder to what extent this is a common problem for humanities researchers attempting to engage deeply with those in the sciences? Nevertheless, our primary collaboration with the Organic Research Centre (ORC) is developing exceptionally well. In a large part this is thanks to some very recent innovations in their breeding activity, and the legislation surrounding the same. I went down to Newbury to visit the ORC at their headquarters in order to participate in their monthly staff workshop, and had the opportunity to explain (A) how historians have interpreted the development of the plant breeding industry and its relations with genetics, (B) what intellectual property models the industry has been based on in the past, and (C) what potential lessons this all has for the (and their) future.
Image courtesy of the Organic Research Centre.
The ORC is currently in the process of marketing its first varieties, varieties that it has only been legal to sell since March of this year. Prior to this time, they could not enter the varietal register (a requirement for any marketed variety) on the grounds that they were not sufficiently Distinct, Uniform, and Stable. This new legislation is an important development, because it recognises that there are a number of different ways to be a ‘variety’, and it places this recognition directly into the same apparatus that currently manages the industry (rather than creating special measures). While the legislation that makes legal the sale of these varieties is only put in place on a trial basis, there is no obvious reason why it will not be made permanent. Even in some nightmare scenario, where the marketed variety failed everywhere it was grown, this would not prove that populations or highly variable varieties were not suitable for inclusion on the agricultural market, just as when the more ubiquitous pure line varieties fail nobody claims PBRs should be abolished. Rather, what makes these legislative changes particularly positive, and likely to be long lasting, is that they prove the principle that heterogeneous stocks of seed can be bred, multiplied, marketed, and circulated, just as any other varieties can, provided sufficiently sophisticated language and systems for tracking are put in place. It is - in short - a good thing. AND it promotes competition, so there.
I split my talk into two sections, giving two very concrete examples of how the history and philosophy of science can directly inform contemporary practice. Both points can also be generalised, not only for 'HPS, plant breeders and intellectual property', but for 'HPS, industrial/charitable/national partner and important issue X'.
In the first half of the talk, I focussed on how HPS can uncover the various different forces that produced the contemporary IP landscape in which we all live. I focussed on the origins of the most crucial development in C20th UK plant breeding, Plant Breeders’ Rights. By unpacking the various different social and scientific changes that together helped make PBR’s desirable, then possible, and finally actual, historians of science can open up the contemporary discussion, one that staff at the ORC are already heavily embedded in. Much can be accomplished by simply pointing to a time before PBRs existed, which is not to say we necessarily wish to return to such a time, merely that we can thereby better understand how they came about, and avoid any assumptions or biases that we would no longer wish to carry with us. The bias I focussed on was that of the need for purity in varieties, which seems to have come of age in the interwar years and flourished following the Second World War.
In the second half of the talk, I explained how HPS theories and analysis can help plan for the future. The focus was of course on Professor Gregory Radick’s IP-narrow and IP-broad framework. When debating and discussing the kinds of heterogenous varieties that the ORC is currently breeding (along with a growing number of researchers who see these varieties’ greater adaptability to the environment as an essential characteristic in the face of climate change) some proponents and opponents will sometimes cast the debate as one either for or against IP. This is an unhelpful simplification, one which largely serves to discredit those wishing critique IP law as it currently stands. By embracing the language of IP-narrow/IP-broad, more voices can be brought to the debating table, and a richer notion of intellectual property used in formulating future economic development policies. Over the next few months I will be working with as many actors within plant breeding as possible, to find more and more concrete uses to which IP-narrow/IP-broad might be put.
Just to finish, I would like to let you know that we will soon be hosting a guest post written by one of our collaborators, Dr Viola Prifti, on a conference she recently attended on IP and the biosciences. Things are heating up, so make sure to follow us on twitter, and stick this blog in your RSS readers. Also, don’t be shy about suggesting events for us to attend, or things for us to read.
I split my talk into two sections, giving two very concrete examples of how the history and philosophy of science can directly inform contemporary practice. Both points can also be generalised, not only for 'HPS, plant breeders and intellectual property', but for 'HPS, industrial/charitable/national partner and important issue X'.
In the first half of the talk, I focussed on how HPS can uncover the various different forces that produced the contemporary IP landscape in which we all live. I focussed on the origins of the most crucial development in C20th UK plant breeding, Plant Breeders’ Rights. By unpacking the various different social and scientific changes that together helped make PBR’s desirable, then possible, and finally actual, historians of science can open up the contemporary discussion, one that staff at the ORC are already heavily embedded in. Much can be accomplished by simply pointing to a time before PBRs existed, which is not to say we necessarily wish to return to such a time, merely that we can thereby better understand how they came about, and avoid any assumptions or biases that we would no longer wish to carry with us. The bias I focussed on was that of the need for purity in varieties, which seems to have come of age in the interwar years and flourished following the Second World War.
In the second half of the talk, I explained how HPS theories and analysis can help plan for the future. The focus was of course on Professor Gregory Radick’s IP-narrow and IP-broad framework. When debating and discussing the kinds of heterogenous varieties that the ORC is currently breeding (along with a growing number of researchers who see these varieties’ greater adaptability to the environment as an essential characteristic in the face of climate change) some proponents and opponents will sometimes cast the debate as one either for or against IP. This is an unhelpful simplification, one which largely serves to discredit those wishing critique IP law as it currently stands. By embracing the language of IP-narrow/IP-broad, more voices can be brought to the debating table, and a richer notion of intellectual property used in formulating future economic development policies. Over the next few months I will be working with as many actors within plant breeding as possible, to find more and more concrete uses to which IP-narrow/IP-broad might be put.
Just to finish, I would like to let you know that we will soon be hosting a guest post written by one of our collaborators, Dr Viola Prifti, on a conference she recently attended on IP and the biosciences. Things are heating up, so make sure to follow us on twitter, and stick this blog in your RSS readers. Also, don’t be shy about suggesting events for us to attend, or things for us to read.
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