Patenting Lives, Patenting Alternatives: Commercialising Agricultural Biotechnologies in the Developing World
by Dr Johanna Gibson (Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute)
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Introduction
The impact of international intellectual property standards and their harmonisation, and the obligations upon developing and least developed countries to implement those standards, are key concerns of many significant groups, including indigenous and traditional communities, intellectual property researchers, policy advisors, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The Doha Ministerial Declaration (Doha) and the review of TRIPS Article 27(3)(b) (the Article dealing with the patentability of animal and plant life) indicate the importance of these concerns to the agenda of harmonisation of international intellectual property. These issues are closely linked to international concerns with biological and cultural diversity, and the principles of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
This paper will present some of the initial work of the AHRC Patenting Lives Project, an inter-disciplinary group of international experts brought together to consider the cultural and social implications of patents on life forms, in the context of alternative strategies for commercialisation and dissemination. The Project will publish an initial resource book towards the end of the year, which will be available on-line as well as hard copies on request. There will also be an international conference staged in London, 1-2 December 2005. The work of the Patenting Lives Project will also be considered in a Roundtable at this conference, where several participants will discuss some of the alternative strategies and socio-legal aspects of patents on life forms. A web-site for the Patenting Lives Project has also been created, www.patentinglives.org, upon which developments in this research will be posted, with plans underway to provide translations of key documents into Spanish, Italian, and French.
The Patenting Lives Project is timed to coincide with the significant international discussions currently taking place on this topic, both within the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as other key international intergovernmental bodies, including the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The Project also aims to complement the critical input NGOs into these discussions, particularly in the context of the WIPO Development Agenda and the current discussions in civil society towards a Treaty in Access to Knowledge Treaty.
The present discussion in this paper will introduce the relevance of patents on life forms to other international frameworks, including biodiversity, the environment, and human rights, and will go on to consider whether intellectual property protection is compatible with the facilitation of social, cultural, and economic development of non-industrialised countries in the context of principles of international trade.
Of particular interest to this paper is the relationship between patents and the protection of and access to genetic resources and agricultural biotechnologies. The question of access raises the issue of the particular impact on developing and least-developed countries, as well as traditional and indigenous groups, in imposing intellectual property limitations and regulations upon access and the dissemination of this knowledge. Indeed, approaching the quality of this regulation from the perspective of traditional agricultural communities, indigenous communities, and developing economies, in many ways it is necessary to understand the ethical dimension of the commercial development of agricultural biotechnologies and genetic resources. In the context of the present paper, the patenting of living material raises not only the question of patentability criteria and the commercialisation of agricultural biotechnologies, but also the sustainable development of these agricultural systems, environmental concerns, food security, and cultural and social aspects of agricultural communities.
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