ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the view that cultural communities are morally entitled to intellectual property rights (IPR) and their associated knowledge in plant genetic resources (PGR). It explores the IPRs and the concept of moral entitlement and explains intellectual property rights to refer to any legal recognition that a creation or resource is the intellectual property of a specified individual or group. The chapter argues that from the point of view of such a theory, there is no hypocrisy involved in asserting IPRs for special genetic stocks, yet denying them for original germ plasma; indeed, an entitlement theory cannot ground IPRs for communities in any sort of genetic resources. It also examines two types of entitlement claim made by advocates of IPRs in PGRs for cultural and local communities: the first is based on a labour theory of ownership; the second, on the idea that the proximity of a people to a genetic resource creates an IPR in it.
