I love being alive.
I love feeling the warm sun on my hands and face
Or watching the drizzle droplets float.
I love feeling my pulse and knowing everyone else has one too.
I love looking in the mirror and knowing
That I have a physical form.
I love that I can see, hear music and even traffic,
That I can taste fruit juice and smell perfume and
Touch soft cotton.
I love that I can feel love and pain with so much intensity.
I love feeling loved.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Intellectual Property Rights
What and Why?
When something is invented, be it a procedure, a technology, software or even works of art and expression like music, paintings, movies and literature, it is understood that a lot of work has gone into its creation. People work whole lifetimes on certain discoveries. Intellectual property rights are a set of laws which protect such work from easy duplication. A time frame is given within which that technology or work is exclusively the maker’s to use for commercial purposes. The reasoning being that apart from time and effort, the individual is most likely to have invested money in it heavily. Commercially speaking it is only fair that they reap what they sow.
But the term ‘intellectual property’ denotes the specific legal rights, and not the intellectual work itself.
Under this vast legal set up are subcategories of laws based on what the creation or discovery is. These also include copyrights, trademarks, patents etc.
An industrial design right protects the form of appearance, style or design of an industrial object from infringement. A trade secret is an item of non-public information concerning the commercial practices or proprietary knowledge of a business. Public disclosure of trade secrets may sometimes be illegal.
The purpose of having such rights provides commercial incentive so that they would rather share their information than keep it to themselves. It is useful thus, in sharing of knowledge. If IPR had existed during the time of the invention of the first microscopes, microbiology would’ve developed at a faster rate with Leeuwenhoek sharing his method of lens grinding. The legal protections granted by IP laws are credited with significant contributions toward economic growth.
Intellectual property rights are considered by economists to be a form of temporary monopoly enforced by the state (or enforced using the legal mechanisms for redress supported by the state).
Intellectual property rights are usually limited to non-rival goods, that is, goods which can be used or enjoyed by many people simultaneously—the use by one person does not exclude use by another. The establishment of intellectual property rights, therefore, represents a trade-off, to balance the interest of society in the creation of non-rival goods by encouraging their production, with the problems of monopoly power. Since the trade-off and the relevant benefits and costs to society will depend on many factors that may be specific to each product and society, the optimum period of time during which the temporary monopoly rights exist is unclear.
Modern usage of the term intellectual property began with the 1967 establishment of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), but it did not enter popular usage until passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980.
Problems with IPR
Some critics of intellectual property, such as those in the free culture movement, characterize it as intellectual protectionism or intellectual monopoly and argue that the public interest is harmed by protectionist legislation such as copyright extension, software patents and business method patents. Although the term is in wide use, some critics reject the term intellectual property altogether. Richard Stallman argues that it "systematically distorts and confuses these issues, and its use was and is promoted by those who gain from this confusion." He claims that the term "operates as a catch-all to lump together disparate laws [which] originated separately, evolved differently, cover different activities, have different rules, and raise different public policy issues." These critics advocate referring to copyrights, patents and trademarks in the singular and warn against abstracting disparate laws into a collective term.
Apart from this issue, IPR of biological technology used in production of various pharmaceutically and industrially important products have been controversial.
The main problem has occurred when a product such as, for example, a tablet for easing the symptoms of AIDS patients has been patented and so has been priced a lot higher than any average individual can afford on a regular basis. In this case, the patent holder would expect the government to subsidise it for its people instead of expecting that such a medicine would come any cheaper. This sounds like the best option where both the inventor and the consumer get what they want. But it is still very debatable, considering that it is a matter of life and death, whether the price must be set so high in the first place. Some people would call it the exploitation of people’s need to live.
"What is more important patent rights or patients' rights?"
-Zimbabwean Health Minister, Dr. T. Stamps
(ICASA Conference, Sept. 9, 1999)
Another issue that arises is the attempt and some successes of patenting indigenous knowledge.
Traditional health systems are based in world views or cosmologies that take into account mental, social, spiritual, physical and ecological dimensions of health and well being.
Central importance on the concept of balance - within the individual and between the individual, society and Nature. Imbalance arises with the breaking of the inter connectedness of life - and results in discomfort and disease.
Traditional health systems have organized frameworks for classifying plants, animals, landscapes and climatic conditions in relation to their effects on health and disease.
These taxonomies have much in common with one another and represent a culturally relevant empirical framework for assessing medicinal plant biodiversity. Such taxonomies may diverge significantly with Western classificatory frameworks and assumptions. This is of importance when determining prior art as it pertains to intellectual property law.
Food and medicine are of ten viewed interchangeably. Food is medicine. Diet is the basis of health.
Revitalization movements are drawing on traditional medical know ledge to develop integrated modern and traditional health care projects. These movements and other groups have drawn attention to the shrinking availability of medicinal plants to supply the burgeoning need for herbal medicines in non-Western societies and in the industrial countries. Conservation and horticulture programmes are emerging as vital components of the revitalization of local health traditions.
So it becomes obvious that since there are two very different paradigms of looking at knowledge, there will be a conflict about the legal frameworks of IPR. Indigenous people who have known protected and passed on valuable knowledge don’t think in terms of money to be gained. And if there needs must be money involved, certainly the person who knows how to write a scientific paper on this knowledge doesn’t deserve it even a fraction of a percentage as much as the community which preserved such knowledge. The company or holder of such a patent then becomes legally capable of prosecuting that community for using patented knowledge without paying for it when such a patent is allowed. Is this fair by any means? To invent a law which isn’t sensitive to the various approaches people have been having for so long? To create a blanket system under which everyone must operate similarly?
So now that we know both what IPR is, why it is created and what its main issues are, we can zero in on what is done about them, plant protection.
In the following section we’ll look at legal protection and indigenous knowledge. One must note though, that the exploitation of plants for commercial purposes is currently unsustainable. Along with over harvesting is a lot of habitat destruction which disturbs the balance of the ecosystem. But to get into the question of conservation now would be too much of a deviation.
Addressing Legal Plant and Indigenous Knowledge Protection
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
The CBD is the only major international convention that assigns ownership of
biodiversity to indigenous communities and individuals and asserts their right to
protect this knowledge.
Article 8 (j): State Parties required to “respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and promote the wider application with the approval and involvement of the holders of such knowledge, innovations and practices and encourage the equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilisation of such knowledge, innovations and practices.”
Article 18.4: Contracting Parties should “encourage and develop models of cooperation for the development and use of technologies, including traditional & indigenous technologies."
The CBD competes for influence with the far more powerful TRIPS (Trade Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights).
TRIPS is now the key international agreement promoting the harmonisation of national IPR regimes. Covers four types of intellectual property rights:
1. Patents
2. Geographical indications
3. Undisclosed information (trade secrets)
4. Trademarks
• TRIPS makes no reference to the protection of traditional knowledge. Does not acknowledge or distinguish between indigenous, community-based knowledge and that of industry
• TRIPS does not require adoption of UPOV standards, but rather provision "for the protection of plant varieties either by patents or by an effective sui generis system or by any combination thereof." (Art. 27(3)(b))
INDIA
• From 1994, Indian Government did not succeed in repeated attempts to revise 1970 Patent Act to come into line with TRIPS.
• Efforts to do so resulted in riots on streets. Half a million farmers demonstrating.
• Late 1999 succeeded in amending it in accord with TRIPS and removing protection for important medicines from patent control.
• Activist groups called for a deadline for coming into line with TRIPS to allow time for full debate and resolution of all of the issues involved.
TURMERIC
The Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research of India filed a re-examination request with the US Patent and Trademark Office, seeking revocation of a 1994 patent issued to the University of Mississippi.
Patent, 5,401,504, claimed the use of turmeric for promoting wound healing.
India argued that turmeric is a well known traditional medicine used in India, and written about by Indian researchers as early as the 1950s.
India secured a revocation of the patent.
India is now recording on a set of CD Roms all of the national medicinal plant knowledge. This will be distributed to patent offices world-wide to provide a data base of prior art on Indian traditional medicinal knowledge.
India is also pursuing a comprehensive legal strategy to seek revocation on non-Indian patents on Indian life forms.
OTHER HERBAL EXAMPLES
1. Phyllanthus amarus - Ayurvedic treatment for jaundice. U.S. patent for use
with Hepatitis B.
2. Piper nigrum. Ayurvedic treatment for vitiligo ( a skin pigmentation disorder).
UK patent for application of a molecule from piper nigrup for use in treatment
of vitiligo.
3. Shaman Pharmaceuticals: AIDS diarrhea herbal drug. Contrct for benefit
sharing with source of origin of the information
Social & economic costs of changes in IP legislation
By requiring patents to be applied to pharmaceuticals, it is being argued that TRIPS will have the effect of pricing common drugs out of the reach of most people in poor countries. If herbal medicines are patented - either domestically or internationally - the medicines used as the first and last resort for healthcare by the poor will also become unaffordable. Some examples illustrate the point.
• 200 % increase in cost of medicines after the 1979 introduction of pharmaceutical product patents in Italy.
• Welfare loss to Argentina, Brazil, India, Mexico, Korea, and Taiwan) would amount to a minimum of US$3.5 billion and a maximum of US$10.8 billion.
Income gains by foreign patent owners would be between US$2.1 billion and US$14.4 billion. (World Bank)
• `National health disaster' anticipated by the Indian Drug Manufacturers' Association from implementation of TRIPs in India.
• 30% of Indian population can afford modern medicines.
• Comparisons of prices of drugs between India and countries where patent protection exists: up to 41 times costlier in countries with patent protection.
• Drug prices in Malaysia, where patent protection exists, 20% to 760% higher than in India. Profit-maximising behaviour based on `what the market can bear'.
Some IPR Models for the protection of traditional knowledge.
1. Changing IPR law: Certificates of origin. (Sociedad Peruana de Derecho
Ambiental)
Patent applications based on use of genetic resources and/or traditional knowledge should require:
(i) A sworn statement as to the genetic resources and associated knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous peoples and local communities utilised, directly or indirectly, in the research and development of the subject matter of the IPR application;
(ii) Evidence of prior informed consent of the country of origin and/or indigenous or local community, as appropriate;
(iii) International standardisation of these conditions through an international certification system.
Countries providing resources and/or traditional knowledge to issue certificates indicating that all obligations to the country and indigenous people/local community had been fulfilled e.g. prior informed consent, equitable benefit sharing, etc. Patent applications would include these certificates. Without them, they would automatically be rejected.
2. Transforming traditional knowledge into trade secrets. (IAD-supported project,
Ecuador).
Knowledge from communities wishing to participate in the project to be catalogued and deposited in a restricted access database. Each community will have its own file in the database.
Checks will be made to see whether each entry is not already in the public domain and whether other communities have the same knowledge.
To avoid the danger of a price war from competition among communities, there would be a cartel developed among those communities sharing a trade secret.
The trade secret can then be negotiated in a Material Transfer Agreement with the benefits shared between the government and the cartel members.
3. Local innovations databases.
Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI), India, has developed databases of traditional knowledge and innovations in close collaboration with local community members.
Advocates a global registration system of local innovations. Individual and collective innovators would receive acknowledgement and financial rewards for commercial applications of their knowledge, innovations and practices.
Links would be built between small investors, entrepreneurs and innovators for mutual financial benefits.
Individuals or communities could seek IPR protection in such forms as inventors certificates and petty patents. (The intellectual property law of Kenya was amended in 1989 to provide for a petty patent for traditional medicinal knowledge.)
All national patent offices should be able to access local innovation databases when carrying out prior art searches and examinations.
Future
1. Debate over patenting will hinge much on what constitutes prior informed consent. How to determine who represents a community, what represents full consent.
2. State vs. Community ownership of indigenous knowledge. Should states get royalties from knowledge that originates from communities within those states? Or should royalties go direct to the traditional knowledge holders?
3. Disputes over patents on herbal products - impact on local herbal use and developing country exports of herbals. (World Bank: $3 trillion herbal market (by mid 21st century)
4. More examples of the S. African AIDS drugs type - & with herbals. "Patent rights v. Patients' rights".
5. Restrictions on collaborative research (e.g. India's Biodiversity research approval committee now requires Central Govt approval for all collaborative research pertaining to indigenous knowledge)
6. Southern (Eastern? e.g. ASEAN) alliance to combat prejudicial aspects of TRIPs.
Though the problems of IPR look daunting, and solutions seem difficult, the efforts that are made in that direction are commendable. In the future, some of the above will rise in the way of those who are trying to incorporate changes into the IPR laws. The debate and controversies may never be over but so long as there is effort, there is hope for improvement and balance in these laws.
When something is invented, be it a procedure, a technology, software or even works of art and expression like music, paintings, movies and literature, it is understood that a lot of work has gone into its creation. People work whole lifetimes on certain discoveries. Intellectual property rights are a set of laws which protect such work from easy duplication. A time frame is given within which that technology or work is exclusively the maker’s to use for commercial purposes. The reasoning being that apart from time and effort, the individual is most likely to have invested money in it heavily. Commercially speaking it is only fair that they reap what they sow.
But the term ‘intellectual property’ denotes the specific legal rights, and not the intellectual work itself.
Under this vast legal set up are subcategories of laws based on what the creation or discovery is. These also include copyrights, trademarks, patents etc.
An industrial design right protects the form of appearance, style or design of an industrial object from infringement. A trade secret is an item of non-public information concerning the commercial practices or proprietary knowledge of a business. Public disclosure of trade secrets may sometimes be illegal.
The purpose of having such rights provides commercial incentive so that they would rather share their information than keep it to themselves. It is useful thus, in sharing of knowledge. If IPR had existed during the time of the invention of the first microscopes, microbiology would’ve developed at a faster rate with Leeuwenhoek sharing his method of lens grinding. The legal protections granted by IP laws are credited with significant contributions toward economic growth.
Intellectual property rights are considered by economists to be a form of temporary monopoly enforced by the state (or enforced using the legal mechanisms for redress supported by the state).
Intellectual property rights are usually limited to non-rival goods, that is, goods which can be used or enjoyed by many people simultaneously—the use by one person does not exclude use by another. The establishment of intellectual property rights, therefore, represents a trade-off, to balance the interest of society in the creation of non-rival goods by encouraging their production, with the problems of monopoly power. Since the trade-off and the relevant benefits and costs to society will depend on many factors that may be specific to each product and society, the optimum period of time during which the temporary monopoly rights exist is unclear.
Modern usage of the term intellectual property began with the 1967 establishment of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), but it did not enter popular usage until passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980.
Problems with IPR
Some critics of intellectual property, such as those in the free culture movement, characterize it as intellectual protectionism or intellectual monopoly and argue that the public interest is harmed by protectionist legislation such as copyright extension, software patents and business method patents. Although the term is in wide use, some critics reject the term intellectual property altogether. Richard Stallman argues that it "systematically distorts and confuses these issues, and its use was and is promoted by those who gain from this confusion." He claims that the term "operates as a catch-all to lump together disparate laws [which] originated separately, evolved differently, cover different activities, have different rules, and raise different public policy issues." These critics advocate referring to copyrights, patents and trademarks in the singular and warn against abstracting disparate laws into a collective term.
Apart from this issue, IPR of biological technology used in production of various pharmaceutically and industrially important products have been controversial.
The main problem has occurred when a product such as, for example, a tablet for easing the symptoms of AIDS patients has been patented and so has been priced a lot higher than any average individual can afford on a regular basis. In this case, the patent holder would expect the government to subsidise it for its people instead of expecting that such a medicine would come any cheaper. This sounds like the best option where both the inventor and the consumer get what they want. But it is still very debatable, considering that it is a matter of life and death, whether the price must be set so high in the first place. Some people would call it the exploitation of people’s need to live.
"What is more important patent rights or patients' rights?"
-Zimbabwean Health Minister, Dr. T. Stamps
(ICASA Conference, Sept. 9, 1999)
Another issue that arises is the attempt and some successes of patenting indigenous knowledge.
Traditional health systems are based in world views or cosmologies that take into account mental, social, spiritual, physical and ecological dimensions of health and well being.
Central importance on the concept of balance - within the individual and between the individual, society and Nature. Imbalance arises with the breaking of the inter connectedness of life - and results in discomfort and disease.
Traditional health systems have organized frameworks for classifying plants, animals, landscapes and climatic conditions in relation to their effects on health and disease.
These taxonomies have much in common with one another and represent a culturally relevant empirical framework for assessing medicinal plant biodiversity. Such taxonomies may diverge significantly with Western classificatory frameworks and assumptions. This is of importance when determining prior art as it pertains to intellectual property law.
Food and medicine are of ten viewed interchangeably. Food is medicine. Diet is the basis of health.
Revitalization movements are drawing on traditional medical know ledge to develop integrated modern and traditional health care projects. These movements and other groups have drawn attention to the shrinking availability of medicinal plants to supply the burgeoning need for herbal medicines in non-Western societies and in the industrial countries. Conservation and horticulture programmes are emerging as vital components of the revitalization of local health traditions.
So it becomes obvious that since there are two very different paradigms of looking at knowledge, there will be a conflict about the legal frameworks of IPR. Indigenous people who have known protected and passed on valuable knowledge don’t think in terms of money to be gained. And if there needs must be money involved, certainly the person who knows how to write a scientific paper on this knowledge doesn’t deserve it even a fraction of a percentage as much as the community which preserved such knowledge. The company or holder of such a patent then becomes legally capable of prosecuting that community for using patented knowledge without paying for it when such a patent is allowed. Is this fair by any means? To invent a law which isn’t sensitive to the various approaches people have been having for so long? To create a blanket system under which everyone must operate similarly?
So now that we know both what IPR is, why it is created and what its main issues are, we can zero in on what is done about them, plant protection.
In the following section we’ll look at legal protection and indigenous knowledge. One must note though, that the exploitation of plants for commercial purposes is currently unsustainable. Along with over harvesting is a lot of habitat destruction which disturbs the balance of the ecosystem. But to get into the question of conservation now would be too much of a deviation.
Addressing Legal Plant and Indigenous Knowledge Protection
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
The CBD is the only major international convention that assigns ownership of
biodiversity to indigenous communities and individuals and asserts their right to
protect this knowledge.
Article 8 (j): State Parties required to “respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and promote the wider application with the approval and involvement of the holders of such knowledge, innovations and practices and encourage the equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilisation of such knowledge, innovations and practices.”
Article 18.4: Contracting Parties should “encourage and develop models of cooperation for the development and use of technologies, including traditional & indigenous technologies."
The CBD competes for influence with the far more powerful TRIPS (Trade Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights).
TRIPS is now the key international agreement promoting the harmonisation of national IPR regimes. Covers four types of intellectual property rights:
1. Patents
2. Geographical indications
3. Undisclosed information (trade secrets)
4. Trademarks
• TRIPS makes no reference to the protection of traditional knowledge. Does not acknowledge or distinguish between indigenous, community-based knowledge and that of industry
• TRIPS does not require adoption of UPOV standards, but rather provision "for the protection of plant varieties either by patents or by an effective sui generis system or by any combination thereof." (Art. 27(3)(b))
INDIA
• From 1994, Indian Government did not succeed in repeated attempts to revise 1970 Patent Act to come into line with TRIPS.
• Efforts to do so resulted in riots on streets. Half a million farmers demonstrating.
• Late 1999 succeeded in amending it in accord with TRIPS and removing protection for important medicines from patent control.
• Activist groups called for a deadline for coming into line with TRIPS to allow time for full debate and resolution of all of the issues involved.
TURMERIC
The Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research of India filed a re-examination request with the US Patent and Trademark Office, seeking revocation of a 1994 patent issued to the University of Mississippi.
Patent, 5,401,504, claimed the use of turmeric for promoting wound healing.
India argued that turmeric is a well known traditional medicine used in India, and written about by Indian researchers as early as the 1950s.
India secured a revocation of the patent.
India is now recording on a set of CD Roms all of the national medicinal plant knowledge. This will be distributed to patent offices world-wide to provide a data base of prior art on Indian traditional medicinal knowledge.
India is also pursuing a comprehensive legal strategy to seek revocation on non-Indian patents on Indian life forms.
OTHER HERBAL EXAMPLES
1. Phyllanthus amarus - Ayurvedic treatment for jaundice. U.S. patent for use
with Hepatitis B.
2. Piper nigrum. Ayurvedic treatment for vitiligo ( a skin pigmentation disorder).
UK patent for application of a molecule from piper nigrup for use in treatment
of vitiligo.
3. Shaman Pharmaceuticals: AIDS diarrhea herbal drug. Contrct for benefit
sharing with source of origin of the information
Social & economic costs of changes in IP legislation
By requiring patents to be applied to pharmaceuticals, it is being argued that TRIPS will have the effect of pricing common drugs out of the reach of most people in poor countries. If herbal medicines are patented - either domestically or internationally - the medicines used as the first and last resort for healthcare by the poor will also become unaffordable. Some examples illustrate the point.
• 200 % increase in cost of medicines after the 1979 introduction of pharmaceutical product patents in Italy.
• Welfare loss to Argentina, Brazil, India, Mexico, Korea, and Taiwan) would amount to a minimum of US$3.5 billion and a maximum of US$10.8 billion.
Income gains by foreign patent owners would be between US$2.1 billion and US$14.4 billion. (World Bank)
• `National health disaster' anticipated by the Indian Drug Manufacturers' Association from implementation of TRIPs in India.
• 30% of Indian population can afford modern medicines.
• Comparisons of prices of drugs between India and countries where patent protection exists: up to 41 times costlier in countries with patent protection.
• Drug prices in Malaysia, where patent protection exists, 20% to 760% higher than in India. Profit-maximising behaviour based on `what the market can bear'.
Some IPR Models for the protection of traditional knowledge.
1. Changing IPR law: Certificates of origin. (Sociedad Peruana de Derecho
Ambiental)
Patent applications based on use of genetic resources and/or traditional knowledge should require:
(i) A sworn statement as to the genetic resources and associated knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous peoples and local communities utilised, directly or indirectly, in the research and development of the subject matter of the IPR application;
(ii) Evidence of prior informed consent of the country of origin and/or indigenous or local community, as appropriate;
(iii) International standardisation of these conditions through an international certification system.
Countries providing resources and/or traditional knowledge to issue certificates indicating that all obligations to the country and indigenous people/local community had been fulfilled e.g. prior informed consent, equitable benefit sharing, etc. Patent applications would include these certificates. Without them, they would automatically be rejected.
2. Transforming traditional knowledge into trade secrets. (IAD-supported project,
Ecuador).
Knowledge from communities wishing to participate in the project to be catalogued and deposited in a restricted access database. Each community will have its own file in the database.
Checks will be made to see whether each entry is not already in the public domain and whether other communities have the same knowledge.
To avoid the danger of a price war from competition among communities, there would be a cartel developed among those communities sharing a trade secret.
The trade secret can then be negotiated in a Material Transfer Agreement with the benefits shared between the government and the cartel members.
3. Local innovations databases.
Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI), India, has developed databases of traditional knowledge and innovations in close collaboration with local community members.
Advocates a global registration system of local innovations. Individual and collective innovators would receive acknowledgement and financial rewards for commercial applications of their knowledge, innovations and practices.
Links would be built between small investors, entrepreneurs and innovators for mutual financial benefits.
Individuals or communities could seek IPR protection in such forms as inventors certificates and petty patents. (The intellectual property law of Kenya was amended in 1989 to provide for a petty patent for traditional medicinal knowledge.)
All national patent offices should be able to access local innovation databases when carrying out prior art searches and examinations.
Future
1. Debate over patenting will hinge much on what constitutes prior informed consent. How to determine who represents a community, what represents full consent.
2. State vs. Community ownership of indigenous knowledge. Should states get royalties from knowledge that originates from communities within those states? Or should royalties go direct to the traditional knowledge holders?
3. Disputes over patents on herbal products - impact on local herbal use and developing country exports of herbals. (World Bank: $3 trillion herbal market (by mid 21st century)
4. More examples of the S. African AIDS drugs type - & with herbals. "Patent rights v. Patients' rights".
5. Restrictions on collaborative research (e.g. India's Biodiversity research approval committee now requires Central Govt approval for all collaborative research pertaining to indigenous knowledge)
6. Southern (Eastern? e.g. ASEAN) alliance to combat prejudicial aspects of TRIPs.
Though the problems of IPR look daunting, and solutions seem difficult, the efforts that are made in that direction are commendable. In the future, some of the above will rise in the way of those who are trying to incorporate changes into the IPR laws. The debate and controversies may never be over but so long as there is effort, there is hope for improvement and balance in these laws.
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