ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the common heritage approach to genetic resources, private property rights and the state sovereignty paradigm. The purpose of intellectual property rights is to enhance social welfare by encouraging innovation in the long term. The idea of common property reaches back over the philosophy of enlightenment, early Christian thought and Roman law up to the Socratics. The common heritage principle was at the core of the 1983 International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources. From the Neolithic revolution onward, the unhindered exchange of plants and seeds has been the basis on which human agriculture developed and thrived. The reason for developing countries to pursue the benefit-sharing objective and the state sovereignty principle was their assumption that genetic resources have vast commercial value, which is not necessarily the case. 'Biopiracy' is the key narrative driving developing countries' engagement with Access to and Benefit-sharing (ABS) governance.
