Research On Agricultural Biotechnology R&D Welfare Effects And Policy From The Perspective Of Intellectual Property Rights

The global transgenic crop planting areas had seen a sharply rising trend since two genetically modified cotton varieties, NuCOTN33B and NuCOTN35B containing the BollgardTM (Bt) gene were introduced commercially in 1996 through a licensing agreement by US government. We should attribute this not only to the characteristics the transgenic crops owns such as resistant to insect pest and herbicide resistant and so on that could decrease the agricultural production cost largely, but also furthermore to the R&D field could attract much fund as the intellectual property rights strengthen that the researchers could get much more economic benefit, especially so many private R&D companies enter the transgenic seed field. There is no doubt that the strengthen of agricultural R&D intellectual property rights is beneficial to stimulate private R&D companies could enter this field to develop new varieties and so improve agricultural productivities, this is true both for developed and developing countries. But we should see clearly that the main reasons that the developed countries leading by the United States propagate strict agricultural R&D intellectual property rights in the world is because of country's interest to much extent, nowadays most of the global transgenic crop patens are owned by only several agricultural biotechnology giant of developed countries especially the United States have the absolute comparative advantage in the global agricultural biotechnology R&D field. This empower them have heavy monopoly power on transgenic seed market and they try their best to enact strict intellectual property rights in the whole world for the purpose of getting big interest. Obviously today the biased international agricultural R&D intellectual property rights to some extent have gravely violated the principle of balancing of interest, which is the fundamental spirit and legislation purpose of modern intellectual property rights law. And this will be harmful to the peasants in many developing countries because this let them sometimes can't pay the expensive seed charged by transnational seed giant.This paper just choose the problem badly in need of solving be the penetration point faced by developing countries during the course of R&D and applying of agricultural transgenic seed, take balancing of interest as basic principle and developing models base on the fundamental conditions of agricultural biotechnology R&D and apply in our country, after analyzing the characteristics of the agricultural biotechnology R&D market structure as well as its causes in the developed countries, we choose the Bt cotton as object of study, through developing a partial equilibrium three-region world trade model and an agricultural R&D economic surplus model under the condition of opening to measure the welfare change of main body such as peasant, consumer and researcher in scenarios with different intellectual property rights levels and technology spillover levels in China, the United States and other regions in the world represented by India and have a comparison analysis of the cost and returns in these three regions, following that we have an analysis of the potential impacts and its applicability of genetic use restriction technologies in our countries, which is one of the latest development in the international agricultural biotechnology R&D area, finally we have a study on the possible agricultural biotechnology R&D intellectual property rights traps in developed countries and its potential harmful effect for our country and what evade measure should we take. Through these several part we construct an all-round analytical framework of transgenic seed R&D welfare effect and policy based on intellectual property rights perspective, to explore the agricultural biotechnology R&D and intellectual property rights policy that most suit for our country, avoid being caught in agricultural R&D intellectual property rights traps of developed countries, meanwhile give appropriate stimulation to both domestic and foreign R&D company, and to reach ordered interest balance between domestic cotton peasants, cotton consumer,researchers and transnational agricultural biotechnology R&D giant, so finally to realize the double-target of promote the technology spillover of transnational seed giant and construction of our country's seed R&D market, and to promote our country's agricultural transgenic seed R&D company strength competition and grow up as soon as possible,and be able to participate in international competition in the future.The possible innovative points of this paper are as following:firstly, is the innovation of research perspective. We take the balancing of interest, which is the legislative purpose of modern intellectual property rights, as the basic principle, we develop a partial equilibrium three-region world trade model implanted a technology fee variate and a agricultural R&D economic surplus model under the condition of opening to have an empirical research on genetically modified cotton R&D welfare effects after analyzing the characteristics of the agricultural biotechnology R&D market structure as well as its causes in the developed countries, and then we have an analysis of the possible agricultural biotechnology R&D intellectual property rights traps in developed countries and the potential impacts and of GURTs in China and the relevant government behavior, so we construct an all-round analytical framework of transgenic seed R&D welfare effect and policy based on intellectual property rights perspective. Secondly is the innovation of research method and its application. On the one side, through developing a partial equilibrium three-region world trade model including China, U.S, and the other regions in the world represented by India to measure the genetically modified cotton R&D welfare effects from the perspective of counterfactual price in three scenarios:different degree of intellectual property rights protection level, technology spillover level and price support level and have a sensitivity analysis of the model's key parameter. On the other hand, this paper use agricultural R&D economic surplus model under the condition of opening to measure the China's Bt cotton R&D welfare effects for the first time and have an empirical study of the assignment of R&D welfare effects in between the north and south countries and benefit counterparts such as researchers, farmers and consumers. Thirdly is the innovation of research results. The welfare of each country as an entirety increases notably, but cotton producer loses heavily because of agricultural treadmill effect, U.S. cotton price support benefits development of its cotton industry despite hurting Chinese cotton producer, China's welfare as a whole increase obviously because the world cotton price decrease. The tactic of trying to cancel technology fee so as to increase farmers' revenue is not advisable, and to improve per unit area yield and synthetically efficiency is the optimum policy chooses for the development of our country's cotton estate in the future...