Policy Studies On IPR Protection In Chinese Agriculture And Agricultural Technology Trade After WTO Membership

Intellectual Property Right (IPR) occupies an important position in the WTO system, IPR together with international trade, tangible goods and service trade constitutes the three major pillars of the World Trade Organization.With China's access to WTO, the key major multi-national agribusiness companies rushed into Chinese agricultural market. The top ten life science and seed business companies around the globe have already seven of them with presence in China through joint ventures to tap the potential market of biotechnology and seed business. Besides, the foreign investment into China has grown very rapidly in recent years based on the most recent information from the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture in year 2003.With the increase capacity for science innovation of the Chinese agricultural research institutions and agribusiness firms in the last few years and the implementation of the out reach strategy for Chinese research and business institutions, this recent development increases the chances of conflict for IPR infringement issues, and IPR in agriculture has become even important than ever before that attracted attention from various governments concerned. IPR is also a topic of much discussion today. The paper employs an economic point of view to analyze the IPR protection rules and regulations under WTO TRIPs agreement and its possible impact on Chinese agriculture.The development trends of the future trade pattern clearly indicated that with economic development and high technology products development, the future trade will be more relying on the IPR related value added goods. If not properly dealed with, it will become a source of friction for agricultural trade.The paper starts with the introduction of the relations for agriculture IPR to economic development, then discuss about the major points of the trips agreement and the basic principles for IPR in agriculture. The paper also developed theoretical models to derive, the optimum IPR protection duration with emphasis on patent. With the existing empirical results, we concluded that the effective length of protection of 6 to 10 years. The survey results collected also support the objectives and priority areas for IPR protection in agriculture in China. The paper also conducted cost and benefit analysis that indicates the protection cost is very much higher in IPR protection in agriculture in China as compared with other countries such as the US and other western countries, this is a very important restricting factor for the patent and PVP application in China.Besides, the paper also discussed the possibilities of the unified system like PCT and UPOV for IPR applications to minimize the cost of application and maintainence.With support of survey data and developed models, the papers conclude with the priority area for IPR protection in agriculture in order is as follows: PVP, Patent, Trade Secret, and Trade marks. The key areas for crops in terms of priority importance are as follows: Maize, Rice, Cotton, Vegetables, and Rapeseeds and formed a set of recommendations for future research.