Our aff is the heart of the topic—here’s the topic paper
Stolte 23, Winston Churchill High School, Director of Debate. (Preston, June 2023, “Intellectual Property Rights A Topic Proposal for the National Federation of High Schools Topic Selection Committee,” https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3A48e5fa2f-8eed-3267-803e-7eea74cbc4a4)
Additionally, any discussion of patent protections and innovation would involve discussions of the advantages and disadvantages of pharmaceutical research and development. Strong patent protection is useful for advancement in biotechnology, synthetic biology, and other life sciences (Taylor, 2019; Ribeiro and Shapira, 2020; Liddicoat, 2020). Patents affect a wide variety of pharmaceutical practices from drug development to antibody/vaccine research (Lemley and Sherkow, 2023). However, advancements in the field of health and biotechnology would benefit from having stronger patent protections given the patent and investment intensive nature of these industries (Schultz, 2020), but also with respect to ability for patent owners to protect their patents (Alison, Lemley and Schwartz, 2015). In the field of biotechnology, gains in innovation from strong intellectual property rights has benefits across a variety of fields which means affirmative teams would not just be limited to the health benefits of biotechnological advancements, but could also read advantages based on GMOs, food shortages, environmental degradation, etc.