Patenting Plant Biotechnology Innovations: Legal Frameworks, Limitations and Ethical Implications

Abstract

The patenting of biotechnology innovations in plant breeding occupies one of the most contested intersections of intellectual property law, agricultural science, and global ethics. Over the past five decades, the expansion of utility patents, plant variety rights, and related forms of intellectual property protection to encompass seeds, genetic traits, gene-editing tools, and biological processes has reshaped the landscape of crop improvement worldwide. This review critically examines the scope of patent protection currently afforded to plant biotechnology innovations, surveys the principal limitations that constrain both patentees and those who seek freedom to operate, and engages systematically with the ethical concerns that have accumulated around these developments. Literature for this review was identified through systematic searches of the following databases: Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, PubMed, AGRIS (FAO Global Index of Agricultural Research), CAB Abstracts, the JSTOR Global Plant Science Collection, WIPO PATENTSCOPE (for regulatory and legislative background), and the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) for pre-publication working papers in law and economics. The article traces the evolution of the international legal framework from the foundational TRIPS Agreement and the UPOV Convention through to the 2024 WIPO Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge. It examines how recent genomic technologies, particularly CRISPR-Cas genome editing, are generating unprecedented patent complexity, and considers how regulatory debates in the European Union illustrate the broader tensions between innovation incentives and public interest imperatives. The concentration of patent portfolios within a small number of transnational agrochemical corporations is analysed in relation to seed market consolidation, rising seed prices, and narrowing access to genetic resources for public-sector breeders and smallholder farmers. Ethical concerns addressed include biopiracy, the erosion of farmers' seed-saving rights, the threat to agrobiodiversity, and the inequitable distribution of biotechnological benefits between the Global North and Global South. The review also considers emerging alternative models, including open-source licensing and digital sequence information governance frameworks, and reflects on the contested future of intellectual property in plant breeding.