5. Patents and the World Trade Organisation

In 1993, half a million Indian farmers in Bangalore protested against plans to implement an international system of intellectual property rights favoured by transnational corporations. This agreement, the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), was eventually signed in 1994 and will be administered by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), whose primary agenda is to remove perceived barriers to 'free-trade'. Any countries ignoring the statutes of the WTO are liable to be prosecuted and may be subject to severe punitive action including sanctions or fines.

TRIPS was the brainchild of a coalition of corporations who called themselves the Intellectual Property Committee. It was vigorously opposed by the resource-rich countries of the Third World because it legitimises biopiracy, enshrines it in international law and undermines community rights. Monsanto's James Enyart describes how this happened:

"Industry identified a major problem for international trade. It crafted a solution, reduced it to a concrete proposal, and sold it to our own and other governments…The industries and traders of world commerce have played simultaneously the role of patients, the diagnosticians, and the prescribing physicians." (1)

TRIPS does not require biotech companies to ask for prior consent before accessing biological resources, nor does it demand that patent holders share their benefits with the people or lands from which the genes originate. Under the agreement, countries are obliged to bring their patent laws into line with the industrialised nations by extending them to include living organisms or by setting up equivalent systems of intellectual property rights.
 

References:

1. Enyart J. (June 1990) A GATT Intellectual Property Code, Les Nouvelles, pp 54-56.

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