Tom Verdonk defends Ph.D. on competition law and food security
Tom Verdonk, a lawyer at Stibbe, obtained his PhD from KU Leuven with his dissertation entitled “Seeds of Market Power: Safeguarding Competition and Food Security through Collaborative Licensing in Seed and Biotech Markets under EU Law and Policy”.
In his dissertation, Tom investigates how EU competition law interacts with intellectual property rights, the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and the regulation of unfair trading practices between businesses. Together, these domains shape the legal-policy framework applicable to licensing in the seed sector.
The seed sector plays a key role in global food security, but is also characterised by high market concentration and increasing reliance on intellectual property rights. In recent decades, the growing use of patents has raised challenges around access to the building blocks of innovation in plant breeding, which include biological material, traits, and tools. In response, seed companies and other actors in seed and biotech markets have turned to licensing.
Against this background, Tom’s dissertation examines how EU law and policy – and in particular EU competition law – regulates such licensing initiatives. These arrangements are increasingly used to facilitate access to proprietary technology and to promote innovation and food security, but they also raise competition concerns and legal uncertainty under existing EU rules and guidance.
Tom critically assesses the current legal-policy framework and identifies several shortcomings in how EU competition law and related legal-policy domains safeguard competition and food security in the seed sector. To address these challenges, Tom developed a theoretical model to guide legal and policy responses. Although initially focused on voluntary, market-driven licensing collaborations in the seed sector, the model also aims to support the design of more adequate regulatory approaches to collaboration across the agri-food supply chain. Moreover, he proposes concrete reforms to support free and fair competition while strengthening food security.
A commercial edition of the dissertation is currently in preparation for publication.
