UN nears landmark deal on combatting biopiracy

GENEVA – The fight against biopiracy — plundering genetic resources and the traditional knowledge surrounding them — could soon be based on an international treaty, which is being finalized at negotiations that began on Monday.

“Let me be candid — negotiations will not be easy,” warned Daren Tang, head of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), as the diplomatic conference in Geneva got underway.

After more than 20 years of talks on the subject, WIPO’s more than 190 member states are meeting at the agency’s Geneva headquarters until May 24 for negotiations on finalizing a treaty.

The United Nations agency dealing with patenting and innovation will try to conclude an agreement by consensus.

Tang said countries were on “the cusp of a truly landmark agreement.”

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“There is no contradiction between a robust and predictable IP regime — one that incentivizes innovation, attracts investments and drives game-changing research — and one that responds to the needs of all countries and their communities everywhere, including those from Indigenous peoples, as well as from local communities,” he said.

The draft treaty text says patent applicants would be required to disclose which country the genetic resources in an invention came from, and the Indigenous people who provided the associated traditional knowledge.

“It’s about fighting biopiracy — that’s to say, the use of traditional knowledge or genetic resources without the agreement of those who held them and without them being able to benefit from them,” said Christophe Bigot, who is leading the French delegation.

Medicines, seeds, cosmetics

While natural genetic resources — such as those found in medicinal plants, agricultural crops and animal breeds — cannot be directly protected as international property, inventions developed using them can be patented.

These resources are increasingly used by companies in everything from cosmetics to seeds, medicines, biotechnology and food supplements.

As it is currently not mandatory to publish the origin of innovations, many developing countries are concerned that patents are being granted that either circumvent the rights of indigenous people or are issued for existing inventions.

Such cases can end up in lengthy legal battles.

Opponents of the treaty fear it will hamper innovation.

But proponents say an additional disclosure requirement would increase legal certainty, transparency and efficiency in the patent system.

They say it will “help ensure that such knowledge and resources are used with the permission of the countries and/or communities from which they originate, enabling them to benefit in some way from the resulting inventions,” said Wend Wendland, the director of WIPO’s traditional knowledge division.

Disagreements persist, notably on setting up sanctions and the conditions for revoking patents.

“The text has been narrowed down a lot in order to arrive at some potential compromise,” expert Viviana Muñoz Tellez of the South Center, an intergovernmental think tank representing the interests of 55 developing countries, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The proposed treaty has “symbolic value because it’s the first time that there will be some reference, for example, to traditional knowledge in an IP instrument,” said Muñoz Tellez.

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