Intellectual Property Protection in the American Chicken–Breeding Industry

The capture and protection of returns from research investments have always been issues in business; in the modern era, they have most often been dealt with through copyright and patent registration. In the chicken–breeding industry, however, the laws of nature served to safeguard the hybridization process and to provide a biological “lock†on specific strains. As new techniques of genetic manipulation came into play, chicken breeders, like others in bio–technology industries, had to reassess their use of intellectual property protection. The following article provides a history of the interplay among the tools for such protection, genetic research, and industry structure.