PIPRA: A Resource for Collaborative Intellectual Property Management in Agriculture

Abstract

Recent decades have seen an increase in intellectual property protection worldwide. Accompanying this trend, there have been growing concerns about how best to encourage the development and distribution of technologies that benefit developing countries within this new and rapidly changing landscape of intellectual property rights (IPRs). PIPRA (The Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture) addresses these issues in the area of agriculture by mobilizing collaborative support of a wide range of public sector institutions worldwide. In addition to this broad base of institutional support, PIPRA’s molecular biology labs and its network of pro bono IP attorneys together allow a coordination of scientific and legal resources that is crucial for the provision of practical IP services to support advances in developing country agriculture.