Trade in Agricultural Technological Innovations in the Context of Intellectual Property Regime

Objectives: The study is to assess the likely impact of the payment of royalty for trade mark obtained by the Theo Ruys Management & Holding B.V, a Netherland Company for rose varieties on rose cultivation and its profitability in Tamil Nadu State of India.

Methods and Statistical Analysis: The study heavily relied on time series data gathered from various published sources. Data were also collected by personal discussion with various stakeholders. Export instability in terms of quantity and value, unit value realization, cost and returns of rose cultivation and sensitivity analysis of costs and returns of rose cultivation incorporating the royalty payment were analyzed by estimating the averages and co-efficient of variations.

Findings: India’s rose export is phenomenal in the recent years due technological and policy supports nevertheless the fact remains that there is inconsistent supply but India continues to supply roses to major markets. No doubt, rose cultivators are realizing higher benefits and my conservative estimates say that farmers gained ₹12.99 lakh per acre of land per annum with a benefit –cost ratio of 1.36 ultimately famers are attracted to this locative business of production of roses. As a result, India continues to export roses however; payment of ₹1.20 per spike exported may result in losing the export market because the farmers incur loss in rose cultivation. The question remains that whether the small and marginal farmers should be exempted from paying such royalty? Does it feasible under the present IPR regime? Though India was exempted to avail certain benefits under WTO including the enacting its own IPR act under sui generis system to protect plants and conserve traditional germplasm, this type of demand would be possible under WIPO? Only alterative suggestions are gearing up the public R&D with professionalism to develop promising rose varieties suitable for export market with export quality traits and technology dissemination processes.

Applications and Improvements: Most of the earlier studies dealt with the economics of production and marketing of rose flowers wherein to some extent efficiency parameters such as technical, allocative and economic efficiencies were estimated. However, the present paper deviates from other studies and brought out the issues of IPR and its impact on domestic production and trade.