The Sustainability of Plants and Plant Intellectual Property Rights

By means of case studies, this book illustrates how access to plants and benefit-sharing from the utilization of plants is designed to work, and it examines the implications of international and European intellectual property laws on access and on the benefit-sharing aspects of international environmental and agricultural laws. In further identifying the challenges, the book explains the differences between European and African approaches to the protection of new varieties of plants, and it points out the implications of these differences for the sustainability of plants. Furthermore, the book examines whether the ongoing international proposals in this area address the challenges that are inherent in efforts to enhance the sustainability of plants.