| Thailand is obliged by the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to confer effective protection on plant varieties. Thus, this thesis seeks to answer how farmers, the public sector, domestic agriculture companies, multinational corporations, or consumers will benefit from Thailand's proposed plant variety protection regime. Thailand's draft law using plant variety protection system (plant breeders' rights) rather than patents should balance the interests of these various interest groups adequately, but plant breeders' rights risk ignoring the preservation of plant genetic resources. Currently, in Thailand, new plant variety owners, like plant breeders and companies, and preservers of plant genetic resources, like farmers and local communities, give insufficient recognition to each other's concerns. This situation also implies the circumstances throughout the world and at the international level. There must be a bridge of recognition and acceptance to connect the institutions, procedures, and regulations for the conservation of genetic resources and protection of traditional plant-related knowledge with those of the intellectual property regimes for new plant varieties. Critical to building that regime will be extensive efforts to educate both farmers and communities holding important plant genetic resources. Finally, while the research underlying this thesis indicates that there should ideally be separate new plant variety protection and plant genetic resources regimes, it is not necessarily fatal to the protection of either plant type if the regimes are joined in one law as political realities may be forcing in Thailand. What is critical for a country like Thailand which is rich in plant genetic resources and dependent on promoting good plant varieties for the prosperity of its agricultural economy, is that neither one nor the other is left unaddressed as Thailand complies with the TRIPS Agreement requirements and enters the world of increasing globalized biotechnology and agricultural commerce. The findings of this thesis are not only useful to Thailand but also are applicable for most developing countries and accountable at the international level. |
