ISDS Case Map
biodiversity | biopiracy
A consumers' group on Saturday urged the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) to turn down the EU-Asean free trade policy on intellectual property rights protection which, if ratified, could affect the Asean agriculture, biodiversity and public health access.
Modifications to intellectual property laws that the Peruvian government "rushed through" to enable the go-ahead of a free trade agreement (FTA) between Peru and the United States could facilitate biopiracy and hamper Peru's position as a protector of traditional knowledge, say experts.
Why EPAs threaten the world's forests and forest peoples
FTAs often include intellectual property protection that is stronger than the World Trade Organisation requires (known as ‘TRIPS-plus' protection). This book highlights the likely effects on developing countries of agreeing to these TRIPS-plus provisions, particularly those in US FTAs.
The Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms for the purposes of patent procedure is not in line with the norms and ethical principles of Costa Rica. Civil society, the scientific community and the different congregations should have had a more broad discussion on this Treaty including its ethical, environmental, social, economic and legal implications. Unfortunately, this did not happen and the decision to vote the US-DR-CAFTA, with its obligation for Costa Rica to accede to the Budapest Treaty, at referendum was not taken with a generalized prior informed consent.
Costa Rica's highest court on Thursday overturned an intellectual property law demanded by the US prior to the enactment of the Central American Free Trade Agreement. The Constitutional Court ruled that lawmakers improperly passed the bill -- which included provisions on biodiversity -- without consulting Indian groups.
The right laments the "isolation" of the Bolivian economy from the global currents of trade because it has put three crosses against the free trade agreement with the United States and there isn't the will to take part in an agreement with the European Union, the "biggest markets on the planet".
In the early hours of Thursday, representatives of the governments of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru agreed to let Peru legislate intellectual property on its own to accommodate its Free Trade Agreement with United States, on the margins of Decision 486 of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN). Bolivia voted against this move in order to preserve the principles and foundations of the CAN.
Article 149 requires the EC Party and the Signatory CARIFORUM states to provide for the protection of plant varieties in accordance with the TRIPS Agreement and to consider, in this connection, accession to UPOV, 1991.
Bolivia's position on intellectual property rights, on the one hand, and biodiversity, on the other, had earlier put a damper on Colombia and Peru's drive to sign a trade deal with the US and is now affecting that to reach one with "the 27".
