The article explores briefly some problems associated with Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) for biotechnological inventions. IPR are inadequate for the protection of new advanced technologies and particularly for biotechnology. The problem is not only legal but mainly economic, for IPR has emerged as the major competitive weapon in the world economy. In this context, the main role of IPR is as a mechanism for the appropriation of new inventions, and as an instrument to deter rivals and control markets. The current (...) debate, including the negotiations of the Uruguay Round, are not so much concerned with the search for legal mechanisms adapted to the characteristics of biotechnologies as they are for the building up of an efficient appropriability mechanism on the international level for biotechnological inventions and with mechanisms for the control of their diffusion. (shrink)