Seeds of Dispute: Intellectual-Property Rights and Agricultural Biodiversity

This Article is about the interrelationship between expanding intellectual-property rights and the conservation of biodiversity. While these rights are not strictly correlated with conservation, the types of markets and companies producing commercial seeds and other agricultural inputs tend to promote monocultures that erode biodiversity in both the developed and developing world. Furthermore, this Article argues that the rise of genetically engineered crops in the last two decades further exacerbates both intellectual-property claims of companies owning patented seed and biodiversity, as metaphorical monoculture becomes realized with genetically engineered crops in fields where all the plants have the same genetic structure