People Plants and the Law

Presented by Susannah Chapman. Over the past several decades, many fruit breeding programs have begun to commercialize new varieties via the strategic use to two legal techniques: the use of plant variety protection—coupled with contracts to create small “clubs” of select growers—and the use of branding to foster ready consumer demand for the protected fruit that the club would produce.

Presented by Rosemary Coombe and David Jefferson. Much socio-legal research on intellectual property in relation to food and agriculture focuses on the influence of global policy norms on domestic law-making and the expansion of new international trade opportunities for small-scale producers. Other studies have examined controversies and contestations around government actors claiming foods as manifestations of their national heritage. We