Towards an Ecological Intellectual Property: Reconfiguring Relationships Between People and Plants in Ecuador (Routledge Research in Intellectual Property)

This book focusses on analysing how legal systems set the terms for interactions between human beings and plants. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Table of Contents 6 Acknowledgements 10 Introduction 12 A Note on Methodology 14 Structure of the Book and Chapter Summaries 17 Part 1 Conventional Approaches to the Governance of Human-Plant Interactions 24 1 Taking Plants Seriously in Law 26 1.1 Challenging the Epistemology of Plants 29 1.2 Recognising Nature as a Subject with Rights 35 1.3 Eco-Centric Ecuador: Constitutional Protections for Pachamama 39 1.4 Towards an “Ecological Turn” in Law 44 2 Turning Plants into Intellectual Property 50 2.1 Plants as Inventions 53 2.2 The Emergence of Systems for Plant Breeders’ Rights 57 2.3 Alternatives to the Plant Breeders’ Rights Model of Intellectual Property for Plants 62 3 Universalising an Instrumental Approach to Plants in Law 72 3.1 The Contraction of Policy Space for Intellectual Property Lawmaking 73 3.2 The Expansion of UPOV as Explained by Free Trade Agreements 76 4 The Logic of Plant Genetic Resources 91 4.1 The End of the Common Heritage Approach 92 4.2 The Emergence of the Global Biodiversity Treaties 95 4.3 The Instrumental, Economic, and Proprietary Logics of Plant Genetic Resources 101 Part 2 Experimenting With an Eco-Centric Approach: An Ecuadorian Story 108 5 Reconfiguring Intellectual Property in Ecuador 110 5.1 The Ingenios Act: Intellectual Property meets Sumak Kawsay 111 5.2 The Making of the Ingenios Act 114 5.3 The Aspirations of the Ingenios Act 117 5.4 The New Institutionalism of the Ingenios Act 122 5.5 The Ingenios Act: Reimagination or Recapitulation? 125 6 The Ecuadorian Approach to Intellectual Property for Plants 137 6.1 The Reconstitution of the Plant Variety in the Ingenios Act 140 6.2 The Limits of Intellectual Property for Plants in the Ingenios Act 147 7 Alternatives to Conventional Legal Imaginaries for Human-Plant Interactions 160 7.1 Seed Law as an Alternative to Intellectual Property 161 7.2 Traditional Knowledge Protection as an Alternative to Intellectual Property 170 7.3 Food Sovereignty as an Alternative to Intellectual Property 179 8 Lessons from the Ecuadorian Experiment with an Ecological Turn in Lawmaking 187 8.1 Pachamama Goes to Court: Adjudicating the Rights of Nature 188 8.2 What the Rights of Nature Jurisprudence means for Plants 192 8.3 Lessons from Eco-Centric Experiments in Lawmaking 196 Bibliography 204 Appendix A: Tables 218 Appendix B: Figures 230 Index 234 Conventional,Approaches;,Instrumental,Approach;,Eco-Centric,Approach;,Ecuadorian,Approach;,Human-Plant,Interactions Conventional Approaches,Instrumental Approach,Eco-Centric Approach,Ecuadorian Approach,Human-Plant Interactions "This book focuses on analysing how legal systems set the terms for interactions between human beings and plants. The story that the book recounts is one of experimental lawmaking in Ecuador, a country where over the past decade, governmental officials and civil society advocates have attempted to reconfigure how human individuals and institutions relate to nature, by following an "eco-centric" approach to lawmaking. In doing so, Ecuadorian legislators, administrators, and judges have taken seriously the ontologies of non-human entities, including plants, through a process that has required the continuous navigation of tensions with certain "logics" that pervade conventional legal regimes. The book endeavours to disrupt these conventional assumptions and approaches to lawmaking by taking seriously alternative strategies to reconstitute interactions between people and plants. In doing so, the book argues in favour of an "ecological turn" in laws that govern vegetal life. The analysis is based on a close examination of the experiences that lawmakers in Ecuador have had when experimenting with innovative approaches to re-form relationships between human and non-human beings. Concretely, these experiments have yielded constitutional, legislative, and regulatory changes that inform the inquiry of how intellectual property and plant genetic resources laws - both in Ecuador and worldwide - could become more "ecological" in nature. The argument that the book develops is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and empirical research in Ecuador, complemented by archival and doctrinal legal analysis. The contents of the book will be of interest to an academic audience of legal scholars and postgraduate students in law, in addition to scholars and students in the fields of anthropology, sociology, socio-legal studies, and science and technology studies"-- Provided by publisher