Part of Lesson Plan: Who Owns DNA? (Intellectual Property of GMOs)

Activity Overview / Details

Ask the students to name some things that they own. Make a list of student responses on the the board. Stop after you have about 15 items listed. Most likely all the items listed will be tangible items of personal property for the students. Perhaps some may include real property such as a home.

Ask the students about the following situations:

• Can someone "own" an idea?

• If I have an idea that we should go to a movie tonight and we, in fact, go, do you owe me something for "using my idea"?

• What if you spend long hours working on a report for class and another student who does no work simply copies your work? Has "something" been taken from you?

• Suppose you write your own song and perform it at an "open mike" night at a coffeehouse. What if you next hear your song being performed on the radio by a major artist without your permission? Was "something" taken from you?

• Imagine that you develop a new kind of cell phone that never needed to be recharged? What would you do with your new technology?

Patent this invention so you could make money.  Control its use - so that whoever used it had to pay you and you could sue anyone who used it without permission?

Give the technology to the world for anyone to use freely?

• Beetles can destroy potato crops. Imagine you have created a strain of potato that is safe for humans but deadly to beetles (when they eat the leaves they get sick and die.) What would you do with your new invention?

Patent this invention so you could make money.  Control its use - so that whoever used it had to pay you and you could sue anyone who used it without permission?

Give the technology to the world for anyone to use freely?

Tell students that intellectual property rights and patent laws are in place to allow inventors the opportunity to be compensated for their ideas. Explain that it would be very frustrating to spend years developing an idea and then have someone immediately steal it from you and profit from your work.