Intellectual property rights on varieties and access to plant genetic resources : Towards a coherent and an ethically based approach

The concept of intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) is a very old one, dating as far back as Ancient Greek times. A specific system of IPRs for living organisms was adopted internationally for the first time, for plant varieties, in 1961, through the UPOV Convention. Progress in the field of biotechnology in the 1970s was the starting point for extensive debate on the patenting of living material among both the scientific community and in public fora, resulting in several independent international agreements which, in turn, contributed to the evolution of the Patent System for gene protection and of the statute of plant genetic resources. But, in their Current state, the provisions of these various agreements are not globally coherent and, more particularly, conflict specifically with plant varieties and genetic resources. The questions could be solved by generalizing the cornerstone principle of the UPOV Convention, i.e. the free use of genetic variability, which seems to meet the demand of the scientific community. (Résumé d'auteur