Intellectual property rights are characterized in a new Earthscan book (Tansey and Rajotte (eds) The Future Control of Food: A Guide to International Negotiations on Intellectual Property, Biodiversity and Food Security (2009)) as ‘mind-numbingly complex but fundamentally important’. Food security becomes startlingly clear in a Sunday Times report that warns societies may be only ‘four meals away from anarchy’ (or up to seven meals as reported by a Canadian journalist). Although he does not define IPR and food security in such stark terms, Michael Blakeney (a lawyer) has written a clear and useful review of IPR laws and patent legislation as far back as the protection of agricultural innovations in the Papal States Edict of 1833. He has published widely on IPR, and this book will prove useful to law students, researchers, and policy makers interested in IPR, agriculture and the protection of global food security, particularly in developing countries. Blakeney calls for a new ‘Green Revolution’ to deal with the current food security crisis, through enhanced research and establishment of policies that address supply, distribution and consumption. By 2020, according to FAO, cereal production must increase by 41%, meat by 63%, and roots and tubers by 40%. Blakeney makes detailed recommendations to achieve such goals, through: policy capacity building, implementation of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, benefit-sharing principles, source country rights, protecting traditional knowledge, technology transfer, variety protection, a clearinghouse mechanism, research and innovation, and merging the CGIAR centres into a World Agriculture Organization. This publication deserves wide and thoughtful attention.