Intellectual Property’s Antecedent: Seed Law and the Regulation of Biological Materials in British Colonial Gambia

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Over the past century, states have used a diversity of juridical methods to regulate the emergence and circulation of biological materials. These have included a number of different forms of intellectual property protection—such as plant patents, plant variety rights, and utility patents—but they have also entailed a diversity of other legal interventions intended to regulate the quality and circulation of plant germplasm within economically important agricultural markets. This chapter tracks the rise and fall of one such intervention within the British Empire—the implementation of a Seednut Storage Law in colonial Gambia—in order to explore the relationship between living materials and intellectual property law.</jats:p>