Exclusion, commodification, and plant variety rights legislation

Abstract

<p>Plant variety rights legislation, now enacted in most Western countries, fosters the commodification of plant varieties. In this paper, we look at the conceptual issues involved in understanding and justifying this commodification, with particular emphasis on Australian legislation. The paper is divided into three sections. In the first, we lay out a taxonomy of goods, drawing on this in the second section to point out that the standard justification of the allocation of exclusionary property rights by appeal to scarcity will not do for abstract goods such as plant varieties, since these goods are not made scarcer through consumption, and considering alternative – economically consequentialist – justifications. In the third section, we consider these justifications as they apply to the particular case of the commodification of plant varieties, and the legislation that fosters it. A definitive answer to the question of whether this legislation is advantageous awaits further empirical information, but we point to several intrinsically problematic aspects of it.</p>