In the United States we are used to an IP regime where the state grants the IP rights (usually limited monopolies) but does not itself own IP. That's not universally true, though. Many other countries rest control of local IP with the government and control its use and export. Two of those countries are Bolivia and Ecuador. This matters because, as Lisa M. Hamilton reports for Harper's, these countries control the germ plasm (i.e. the biological IP) for quinoa. It's possible that quinoa is just another flash-in-the-pan fad-of-the-month food. But it's also possible that this crop, which contains a variety of nutrients and is the only known plant to have a whole protein, is an important resource in the fight against world hunger and a possible way to stave off the crop depradation In order to do that, though, it would need to be adapted to grow at something other than the high, cold, barren conditions where it now thrives. If you could get hold of the…
↧