Recognition is important for public institutions because the connection of their name to useful products allows them to show to the users of these products (farmers) and to their funding agencies (government) how useful the tax-payers’ money is spent. This is particularly useful where public spending is under pressure. Similarly, when the products are linked to the individual inventor it is easy to assign the appropriate level of recognition to these productive scientists.

Transfer of technology arguments for the protection of inventions deal with the possibilities for market segmentation through the use of intellectual property. Seed producers are generally hesitant to add a new variety to their product range, because increasing the number of varieties increases costs for isolation in production fields, separation of seed lots in seed processing and packaging, and in the costs of storing and marketing different products. A seed producer may be more interested to include a new variety in his product range when he has the certainty to be the only one to sell the variety in a particular market for at least a number of years. Since the objective of a public breeding programme is to make sure that new and better varieties reach farmers, protection can help to give seed producers an exclusive license for a particular market (e.g. a province). In this way, the licensing strategy of a public institution may stimulate the development of a competitive seed industry. For example: four seed companies have emerged in Uganda, that all have exclusive licenses for some OP maize varieties and hybrids produced by NARI.

So-called ‘defensive protection’ also falls within the scope of this argument. Some institutions have a policy to protect their inventions to avoid that other entities will claim IPRs on it. Such protection might create obstacles for access to the inventions by certain target groups, especially resource-poor farmers. Officially, this should not be necessary, because if the institute has released (and/or published) the technology or variety it should be considered part of the “prior art” (in patents) or “common knowledge” (in plant breeder’s rights).
However, different countries define these terms differently and there may be good reasons to either protect or (skilfully) publish the inventions if this kind of piracy is to be avoided. In the USA only information published in the USA or that is accessible to the patent examiner (in English or a limited number of other languages) is taken into account in establishing prior art. A useful strategy is thus to publish the invention and to make sure that the information is included in the searches by patent examiners in the major jurisdictions.

Access to technologies: The third reason for protecting inventions is to develop assets that can be traded for other technologies. The idea is that access to technologies owned by others may be negotiated more easily when a protected technology can be offered in return. There are very few examples where this actually worked, so don’t put too high hopes on this strategy!

Revenue: The most common argument to protect technologies and plant varieties is the promise of revenue. Many public research institutes have faced budget cuts in the past decade, and many see the introduction of plant breeder’s rights as a saviour in these difficult times.
Different arguments exist against the protection of innovations by public institutions:

1. the invention was developed using public funds, so society should not have to pay to get access to these products of research
2. public institutions that protect inventions distort competition in the market.
3. the objective of revenue collection will inevitably distort the research agenda of the institute

However, in several countries, policies are explicit that public research institutions should seek protection and should commercialise their inventions. This is done to increase the public research budget, to make the institutes more competitive and to stimulate public-private cooperation.