Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge & the Law. Solutions for Access and Benefit Sharing The Protection of Biodiversity and Traditional Knowledge in International Law of Intellectual Property Intellectual Property, Community Rights and Human Rights. The Biological and Genetic Resources of Developing Countries

摘要

The Rio Earth Summit, which was convened in June 1992, promulgated the Convention on Biological Diversity ("CBD"). The CBD represented an attempt to establish an international programme for the conservation and utilisation of the world's biological resources and for the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilisation of genetic resources. During the CBD negotiations the developing countries, generally speaking the most biodiverse and thus the richest sources of genetic resources, sought to use the CBD as a means of bargaining access to those resources in return for royalties, technology and research data. Thus the Convention contains articles on access to genetic resources (art. 15); access to and the transfer of technology (art. 16); informed consent and the distribution of the benefits of biotechnological innovations (art. 19).