Harnessing Intellectual Property to Build Food Security - Law School

Scholars have long neglected the centrally important role that food and agriculture has played in the history and development of intellectual property law. Likewise, studies of food and agriculture have tended to focus on a few limited aspects of intellectual property while neglecting the ways that it fundamentally shapes and drives the food chain in all aspects: from the patenting of genetic material, seed, and germplasm, through to the transportation, marketing, and consumption of goods under diverse regulatory regimes.

The ARC Laureate Project Harnessing Intellectual Property to Build Food Security aims to approach the subject of intellectual property and agriculture through a range of interconnected projects in order to understand the law’s impact on our contemporary global food system. These projects will produce outputs that can be used to face the challenges endemic to our modern food system particularly with regard to matters of food security, climate change, and growing markets across the Asia Pacific.

This research is funded by the Australian Research Council's Laureate Fellowship scheme (project number FL150100104).