Strategic Thinking about IPR for Public Researchers.

Plant varieties created by public universities are an important component of improved agricultural production for many crop plants that fall outside of the commercial interests of the major seed companies.  These varieties address many of the specific needs of the local agricultural industry and are funded by assessments on those industries.  Securing intellectual property rights for these varieties allows universities to seek value from a potentially broad global user base that can be used to provide ongoing research support for these breeding programs.   However, broad IP protection is expensive and so any decision to take this path requires strategic thinking on where to protect and how to manage an international licensing program.