Disclosure Requirements: Incorporating the CBD Principles in the TRIPS Agreement On the Road to Hong Kong

20th April 2005 • Co-organised with QUNO; IUCN; IDDRI; CIEL

Details
Documentation

Discuss this eventShare your views with other visitors, and read what they have to say

Under the Doha mandate (Paragraph 19), the TRIPS Council, in its review of Article 27.3 (b) and Article 71.1 TRIPS, is instructed to consider the relationship between the TRIPS Agreement and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the protection of traditional knowledge and folklore. This mandate is additionally strengthened and broadened by Paragraph 12 and 31 of the Doha Declaration respectively, which call for mutual supportiveness between the trade and environment regimes. Since then, work in the TRIPS Council has focused on the relationship between the CBD, WIPO, FAO and the TRIPS Agreement, and particularly on whether and how patent applicants should be obliged to disclose the origin or source of the genetic resource and traditional knowledge used in an invention and provide evidence of prior informed consent and benefit sharing.

Several proposals have been made by a number of countries that show an emerging willingness to deal with the substantive and practical aspects of the issues. At the same time, academics and experts in the field have produced valuable research material with practical suggestions on moving this debate forward. While these attempts demonstrate a general interest to advance on these matters, it has been difficult to find the common ground needed to make appropriate use of the opportunity offered by the Doha Mandate.

In light of this the Ministerial Conference at the end of the year in Hong Kong can offer a new space for negotiations to move this debate forward. To do so, however, much work will be needed during coming months in order to provide the necessary options and solutions for successful decision making. The aim of this dialogue is to support this process by highlighting and constructively discussing some of the potentially promising proposals made in the recent past.

Programme

Moderators: Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz (ICTSD) and Martha Chouchena-Rojas (IUCN)

Addressing the Disclosure Requirement at the International Level - the Role of the TRIPS Agreement?
Begona VENERO (Peruvian Patent Office)
Felix ADDOR (Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property)

How to Operationalise the Disclosure Requirement at the National level in a Manner Supportive of the TRIPS Agreement and the CBD?
Michael GOLLIN (Venable LLP)
N.S. GOPALAKRISHNAN (Cochin University of Science and Technology) (unavailable due to family ill-health)
David VIVAS-EUGUI (ICTSD)

The TRIPS World after Disclosure of Source and Evidence of Prior Informed Consent and Benefit Sharing
Graham DUTFIELD (Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute)
Atul KAUSHIK Indian Mission to the WTO.

Participants List

Speakers

Felix Addor is Chief Legal Officer and Deputy Director General of the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property, Ministry of Justice, Berne/Switzerland; Lecturer at the Law Faculty of the University of Berne, and at the Master of International Law and Economy Programme opf the World Trade Institute, Switzerland, for international negotiations and international intellectual property. He may be contacted at: feli...@ipi.ch.

Graham Dutfield is Herchel Smith Senior Research Fellow at Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute, University of London. He was formerly Academic Director of the UNCTAD-ICTSD Capacity-building Project on Intellectual Property Rights and Development. He has published widely on the relationship between intellectual property rights and health, agriculture, biotechnology, biodiversity, traditional knowledge and development.

Michael Gollin is a patent attorney and partner in Venable LLP, Washington DC (mago...@venable.com). He teaches Strategic Management of Intellectual Property at Georgetown business school. Mr. Gollin founded Public Interest Intellectual Property Advisors (PIIPA), a global non-profit intellectual property resource for developing countries organizations. He received a bachelor’s degree in biochemical sciences from Princeton University, a master’s degree in zoology and molecular biology from the University of Zurich, and a law degree from Boston University.

Dr. N. S. Gopalakrishnan is the Director of the School of Legal Studies, Cochin University of Science and Technology. Prior to joining Cochin University in 1997, he worked as the Dean of the Faculty of Law, Kannur University, Kerala, and as an Additional Professor in the National Law School of India University. He has published two books and a number of research articles in the area of Intellectual Property Laws including in the area of access and benefit sharing. He was an expert adviser to the Indian Delegation to the Diplomatic Conference on WIPO Treaties, 1996, and has served as a member of expert committees set up by the Government of India on IPR issues.

Atul Kaushik works with the Permanent Mission of India to the WTO in Geneva. He has science, law and management degrees, and has worked for more than two decades on international trade issues in the Government of India, with a focus on WTO issues, and in particular intellectual property, environment and dispute settlement in the last ten years.

Sélim Louafi is Research fellow at Iddri since 2001 in charge of the biodiversity programme of this Institute. He is a PhD fellow in Agricultural economy. Formerly, he was Research assistant at the Centre of Philosophy of Law at The Université Catholique de Louvain (2000-2001). He has worked on the different theories of governance applied on biodiversity negotiations. His current research projects are in the fields of access to genetic resources and traditional ecological knowledge. He is coordinating a collective book on the questions of the French experiences of protection of traditional ecological knowledge (to be published in end 2005).

Maria Julia Oliva has led CIEL’s work on intellectual property for over two years and is currently the Director of the Intellectual Property and Sustainable Development Project. She has written extensively on intellectual property and sustainable development issues and has represented CIEL in numerous intellectual property meetings and events. Ms. Oliva is also a Member of the Board of Directors of IP-Watch, a non-profit independent news service reporting on international intellectual property issues. She earned an LL.M. Degree in Environmental Law from Northwestern School of Law at Lewis and Clark College, where she graduated cum laude a law degree at the University of Mendoza, in Argentina.

Brendan Tobin heads the Biodiplomacy Initiative at UNU-IAS. He is the co-founder of the Lima-based Association for the Defence of Natural Rights (ADN), and in 1997 was awarded an Ashoka Fellowship for Social Entrepreneurs for his work with indigenous people in Peru. Mr. Tobin has since the early 1990s been actively involved in international negotiations relating to the Convention on Biological Diversity, and has served as a member of the First Panel of Experts on Access and Benefit Sharing and as a member of the Peruvian national delegation to the Conference of the Parties to CBD, and the Working Groups on ABS and Article 8(j). He is the author of a number of articles on access and benefit sharing and traditional knowledge.

Begoña Aguirre Venero is Vice-President of the Intellectual Property Board of Appeals of the Peruvian National Institute for the Defense of Competition and Protection of Intellectual Property (INDECOPI) since 1999. She also chairs the Peruvian National Commission against Biopiracy since august 2004. She was formerly Head of the Peruvian Patent Office. She received a Law Degree from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (Lima, Peru) and a Diploma on international studies on industrial property from the Centre d’études internationales de la propriété industrielle, Université Robert
Schuman (Strasbourg, France). She has participated as a member of the Peruvian Delegation in a number of meetings before WIPO and the CBD, and has written articles on intellectual property, protection of traditional knowledge and biopiracy.

David Vivas is Programme Manager of Intellectual Property, Technology and Services at ICTSD. He was Senior Attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL); Attaché for legal affairs at the Mission of Venezuela to the WTO; and consultant and writer for the WTO, UNCTAD, South Centre, ACICI, QUNO, Rockefeller Foundation, Venezuelan Institute of Foreign Trade and Ministry of Science and Technology of Venezuela. His work has focused on intellectual property, transfer of technology-related issues, trade in services and international economic and environmental negotiations. David Vivas has a legal background, and has
studied at the Universidad de Catolica Andresa Bello, Venezuela, Georgetown University in the United States and Universidad Externado, in Colombia.

Moderators

Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz is co-founder and first Executive Director of the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, since 1996. He is the Vice-Chair of the Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy (CEESP) and the Chair of CEESP’s Group on Environment, Trade and Investment (GETI). He is also the co-founder and was a General Director of the Fundacion Futuro Latinoamericano (1994-1996, Quito, Ecuador) and has served as a delegate and principal negotiator for Colombia, as a spokesman for the G-77, and as a counsultant for UNDTCP.

Martha Chouchena-Rojas heads the IUCN unit that leads the Union’s work on cross-sectoral agreements and processes, including the CBD, the UNCCC, the WTO and the follow up to the WSSD. She also coordinates IUCN’s work in the context of the United Nations system, as well as internal procedures for policy making throughout the Union. Prior to joining IUCN in 1994, she served as the Director of the National Parks of Colombia and represented the Colombian government in several MEAs. Other experience includes serving as the Program Coordinator for the FAO Tropical Forestry Action Plan in Colombia and as a FAO consultant for various protected areas management projects.

Participants

Marc Allain - WFF
Andrea Theiler - University of St. Gallen
Andreas Kotsakis - International Fund for Agricultural Development
D.R. Aqarwal - Institute of International Trade, India
P. Arhel - WTO
Lucas Rizzo Arrivillaga - ETH Zurich
Riad Baatia
Elmias T. Biadgleng - South Centre
Joshua Bishop - IUCN
Riccardo Bocci - Instituto Agronomico Per L’Oltremare
Marcel Burkart - University of St. Gallen
Claudio Chiarolla - QMU
Michelle Davey - Sidley Austin Brown & Wood
Carolyn Deere - Oxford University
Magali Fabre - 3D Three
Ernesto Fernandez - Mission of Costa Rica
Abril Frayre - Mission of Mexico
Francis Gagnon - CASIN
Otto Genee - MFA Netherlands
Martin Girsberger - Swiss IP Institute
Inger Gregersen - Mission of Norway
Ricardo Guilherme - WTI
Malte Hauschild - Mission of Germany
Pai-Yeh Ho - CIECA Chinese Taipei
Benjamin Hsu - Mission of Taiwan
Pai Jackson - Mission of Taiwan
Linga Kalinde - South Centre
Fernanda Kallas - Universite Paris II Pantheon Assas
Roger Kampf - WTO
Kanitha Kangsawanich - Mission of Thailand
Juergen Kuirsch - Greenpeace Germany
Jyoti Larke - Mission of australia
Yann Le Goater - Universite Paris II Pantheon Assas
Karen Lee Rata - WIPO
Chen-Wei Lin - NSC Chinese Taipei
Duncan Matthews - Queen Mary University of London
Wolf Meier-Ewert - WTO
Jean-Frederic Morin - IDDRI
Alejandro Neyra - Mission of Peru
Raquel Neyra - La Sorbonne
Prof. M.M. Pant - ICWWS, New Delhi
Paquin - UNISFERA
Sonia Pena - IUCN
Rachel Polaud - Institut Etudies Politiques, Grenoble
Aiste Ramanauskaite - Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly
Krishna Ravisrinna - South Centre
Ann-Mary Redmond - EC Commission
Pedro Roffe - ICTSD
Jon Santamauro - Mission of US
Eric Sayettout - Mission of France
Jaiylyn Shi - UNCTAD
Andrew Stevenson - ICTSD
Geoff Tansey - QUNO
Richard Tarasofsky - Chatham House
Tony Taubman - WIPO-OMPI
Guillaume Tell - Pomme Suisse
Urs P. Thomas - University of Geneva
Elisabeth Turk - UNCTAD DITC
Sophia Twarog - UNCTAD
A. Van den Hoven - UNICE
Kristof Volckaert
J. Watal - WTO
Martin Watson - QUNO
Elisabeth Wickeri - HRIC
Sebastian Winkler - IUCN
Connie Yang - NSC Chinese Taipei
Dimitrios Ziagas - University of London