Divisions over disclosure and parallelism remain unresolved at TRIPS Council meeting
Bridges Weekly Digest – 18 June 2008
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND: The first – and ultimately only – day of the meeting of the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement Council, originally scheduled for both Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, was characterised by traditional divisions on a handful of issues. Members’ disagreements centred on a proposed amendment to the TRIPS Agreement that would incorporate a disclosure of origin requirement for biological resources, as well as on whether intellectual property (IP) issues should be included in the upcoming horizontal negotiations on modalities in agricultural and non-agricultural market access. Disagreement centred on the possibility of amending the TRIPS Agreement to bring it in line with commitments regarding the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD): specifically, the proposed amendment would require that patent applications disclose the origin of genetic material or traditional knowledge used in their inventions. The current debate is over whether this amendment is the most effective way to stop the misappropriation of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge. Consequently, the issue of ‘parallelism’ was raised, which refers to the question of whether all three of the IP issues in question – the GI register, extension and disclosure – should be included in forthcoming horizontal negotiations on market opening in the agricultural and industrial sectors. Those in favour of parallelism want the negotiations to include all three IP issues, while those against argue that more technical discussion and empirical evidence is required before moving to text-based negotiations. Those opposed further maintain that parallelism would substantially delay progress in Doha negotiations. Read the article…
