At the End of Property : Patents, Plants and the Crisis of Propertization

Recent decades have witnessed the creation of new types of property systems, ranging from data ownership to national control over genetic resources. This trend has significant implications for wealth distribution and our understanding of who can own what. This book explores the idea of ownership in the realm of plant breeding, revealing how plants have been legally and materially transformed into property. It highlights the controversial aspects of turning seeds, plants and genes into property and how this endangers the viability of the seed industry. Examining ownership not simply as a legal concept, but as a bundle of laws, practices and technologies, this is a valuable contribution that will interest scholars of intellectual property studies, the anthropology of markets, science and technology studies and related fields. Front Cover At The End of Property: Patents, Plants and the Crisis of Propertization Copyright information Dedication Contents List of Abbreviations About the Author Acknowledgements 1 Introduction Propertization and its crises Plants and property More than law: on the nature of property Theory and method: a few notes on genre Outline of this book 2 From Rights to Scripts The arithmetic of property: one, two or many? Revisiting the bundle of rights From rules to practices A technical matter: towards a bundle of scripts Scripts in action Conclusion 3 Property and the Market Forming seed All too commodified The passage of property: making goods flow downstream Remaking plants to fix the market Giving to or taking from the farmer? Seed as a quasi-commodity Conclusion 4 Re-inventing Plants The other plant intellectual property Ambiguous genes Mobile genes Life before the law Plant patents are coming to Europe Patents without genes Conclusion 5 The Values of Patents Rewarding innovation All around patents: frames, hedges, thickets Rent machines Speculative value Filling the void Cutting back the thicket Conclusion 6 Too Much Property Running after property: resowing fees Going material The property of others Conclusion 7 At the End of Property A crumbling Lockean topology After property? Conclusion Notes Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 References Index