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Are they F1 sterile?

If not, then I would encourage developing countries to just igonore the IP rights and/or in the case that they are sterile to develop a generic.



The license requires the country to decide whether it allows planting golden rice. So I wouldn't be surprised the owner of the patents tried to use that to extract money from the countries directly when they fail to enforce it.


Usually international agreements take precedence over local laws. I don't think there would be any problem to enforce it.


The definitions of a sovereign country is that it's government/ people decides what goes.

They can definitely suspend IP protections for indefinite period.


That works when you're a rich and powerful country, but not so much when more powerful countries are willing to inflict economic sanctions on you for disrespecting the IP of their corporations.


IP is not enshrined in a UN charter and is not a human right. There is no reason to believe every country should respect it.

Using it as a cause to impose sanctions would be highly illegal.

Combined with the blowback you'd get for imposing sanctions on Somalia for trying to feed kids, I don't think it's a realistic possibility.


Part of the concept of sovereignty is that you can just ignore agreements and no one can enforce them.


Well, if there's no technical way to enforce the agreement, then the agreement doesn't really exist. But if there's a way to enforce it, another part of sovereignty is that you can complain only to who wants to hear.


In theory yes. In Africa... not so much. [1]

[1] https://mg.co.za/article/2015-06-18-how-zuma-and-ministers-p...


Africa doesn't rely so much on international agreements as much as corporate paramilitary and colonial military forces to enforce foreign interests.




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