ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the elaborating the core features of an evolutionary economics approach to the study of technology. It focuses on the exploration is plant breeders' rights (PBRs); thus, our attention is devoted to the conditions for grant of protection: distinctness, uniformity, stability and novelty. The fact that Net Grants are systematically less than PBR counts validates the suspicion of a regular trend of varieties 'exiting'. The construction of the standards of protection in PBRs, like in other areas of IPRs, should be seen as acts of socio-political accomplishment, contested as they may be. The chapter explains that the attention is primarily devoted to the notion of selection mechanisms and how they act as a nexus in protecting a particular technological trajectory. It focuses on the number of varieties takes on an entirely different turn in the hands of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), the multilateral organisation dedicated to improving and strengthening PBRs.
