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India's fight for tightening the Trips Agreement to check bio-piracy is slowly gaining support from more WTO members.
Initially India's call for mandatory provisions for patent applicants to disclose the origin of genetic material or traditional knowledge used in their inventions (by amending the Trips Agreement) had the support of just eight members. Now, there are 100 WTO members pushing for speedy negotiations on the issues of disclosure and extension of Geographical Indications (GIs ) as part of the Doha negotiations. However, India cannot afford to relax as countries, including the US and Australia, are opposing the move.
The 100 members, including India, EU, Brazil, China and African countries, favouring discussions on Trips want the issue of disclosure and GIs to be part of the horizontal process. The countries are seeking negotiations based on texts or draft agreements on the subjects.
According to WTO sources, the members against the move say that more technical discussion and more empirical evidence is needed before moving to “text-based” negotiations. These countries include the US, Japan, Singapore, Korea, New Zealand, Canada, Australia and Argentina.
Individuals and companies from developed nations, especially the US, have made several efforts to patent the properties of biological products like neem and turmeric which Indians have been using for centuries. The US government revoked patents on certain uses of neem and turmeric when India challenged the decision. Despite the small victories, the developed countries have been extensively using products growing in the developing world in their patented products without paying royalty.
Apart from disclosure of origin, India and other developing countries have also demanded that proper benefit sharing by the patent applicant with the country of origin should be inbuilt in the patents agreement. India is working on a digital directory of the country's traditional knowledge which it wants to share with the US so that US citizens seeking to patent India's knowledge could be identified easily. However, multilateral rules to deal with bio-piracy any day beats bilateral arrangements. (Source: Economic Times)
June 25, 2008
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