Intellectual property rights and the global exchange of molecular plant technologies

The global intellectual property regime for plants is structurally misaligned with the molecular tools on which climate-resilient agriculture now depends. As gene editing, synthetic biology, and Digital Sequence Information (DSI) become central to breeding drought-, heat-, and salinity-tolerant crops, these same technologies are increasingly enclosed within dense patent thickets, trade rules that go beyond the minimum standards of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), commonly called TRIPS-plus rules, and costly regulatory requirements. Using doctrinal legal analysis, a patent-landscape review, and product-level case studies, we show how this architecture generates a "Market Power Effect," whereby a small group of firms can set prices, stack royalties, and control access to enabling technologies, effectively sidelining public breeders, small laboratories, and climate-vulnerable states. We develop the concept of "legal resilience" to capture the idea that molecular resilience in biotech crops is meaningless without legal structures that allow rapid, equitable diffusion of adaptive traits. Empirically, we link rising CRISPR-related patents, escalating licensing and compliance costs, and corporate concentration to stagnant yield growth, persistent human undernourishment, and an emerging form of digital biopiracy that existing access and benefit-sharing instruments cannot contain. We also examine the position of large middle-income innovators, China in particular, which do not fit the conventional North-South division and whose domestic policy choices are pushing toward stronger rather than weaker protection. On this basis, we propose a polycentric reform package: a climate-utility model tier for incremental local adaptations; a multilateral DSI benefit-sharing fund financed by small levies on commercial seed sales; compulsory humanitarian patent pools for abiotic stress-resistance technologies; regional molecular hubs that pair laboratories with pro-bono freedom-to-operate support; and sustained support for the existing network of genebanks and community seed systems as a practical counterweight to the hazard of genetic uniformity. Our central claim is that genetic resilience must be treated as an essential facility for human food security, not merely as a tradable private asset.