ABSTRACT
In the 1990s, advocacy for the rights of campesinos, Indigenous and other Local Peoples began to gain visibility and amass political agency in Ecuador. The Ecuadorian system of intellectual property for plants is an important site for analysis because of the various influences that shaped the lawmaking process, and the diverse interests that the new regime had to mediate. The genealogy of the new Ecuadorian system of intellectual property for plants reveals that the criteria for protection that the Ingenios Act mandated have retained their essential form over time, dating to the first, 1961 Act of the Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants Convention. For instance, the Ingenios system included nullity provisions that were designed to redress violations of the Ecuadorian access and benefit sharing law. During the making of the Ingenios Act, the officials involved in generating drafts of the law were acutely aware of the various international obligations to which Ecuador is subject.
