HindustanTimes.com
Thursday, August 01, 2002
Press Trust of India New Delhi
India along with several other countries have sought an amendment in the present WTO agreement on TRIPS to prevent biopiracy acts under which a person may claim patent rights in a country over genetic resources which are under the sovereignty of another country.
"In the absence of clear provisions in TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) implementation of the agreement may allow for acts of biopiracy and thus result in systemic conflicts with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)," India said in a joint paper submitted recently to the WTO General Council along with ten other countries including Pakistan, Brazil, China, Cuba, Dominican Republic and Ecuador.
The paper on 'the relationship between TRIPS agreement and the convention of biological diversity and Protection of Traditional Knowledge' emphasises that changes in TRIPS agreement is necessary to ensure that it does not run counter to objectives of the CBD.
The TRIPS agreement, it says, should be amended to provide that an applicant for a patent relating to biological materials or traditional knowledge would have to provide certain information as a condition to acquiring patent rights. These conditions include disclosure of the source and country of origin of the biological resource and of the traditional knowledge used in the invention as also evidence of prior informed consent through approval of authorities under the relevant national regimes. In addition to this, members would also be required to provide evidence of fair and equitable benefit sharing under the national regime of the country of origin, it said.
While the CBD recognises members' sovereign rights over their biological resources, the TRIPS agreement allows members to provide patents over biological resources such as plants, animals and micro-organisms. The TRIPS agreement, however, contains no provisions preventing biopiracy acts. In particular, it contains no provisions ensuring prior informed consent of the owners of biological resources used in the invention. It also contains no provisions allowing a member's claims to enforce its national regimes for fair and equitable sharing of benefits from the patenting of its own genetic resources in another country, the paper said.
In the absence of an amendment of the present TRIPS agreement, conflicts between the two agreements i.e. TRIPS and CBD could arise, for instance in the case of patents claimed over genetic resources which are protected by the CBD. The paper cites instances of India, which had in its paper on the 'Protection of biodiversity and traditional knowledge' reported its experience with cases of patents claimed over turmeric, karela, basmati and the neem tree.
"With a view to avoiding conflicts in implementation of TRIPS, an amendment of the agreement to accommodate some essential elements of CBD will be a necessary outcome of the single undertaking of negotiations under the outstanding implementation issues, as part of the multilateral round of negotiations under the Doha Development Agenda," it said.
The paper further warned that failure to provide a solution to this relationship may turn out to be detrimental to the objectives of both instruments.
© Hindustan Times Ltd. 2002.