Assigning and protecting intellectual property rights to use the genetic treasures potentially hidden in the world’s tropical forests is one of the most hotly fought trade battlegrounds between the developed and developing worlds. Now the five nations of Latin America’s Andean Community are putting themselves on the cutting edge of efforts to meet multilateral obligations on intellectual property rights and patents while still safeguarding their own biodiversity. In what is believed to be the first such action by a group of developing nations, they have tailored their common intellectual property rights regime both to the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and to the 1995 World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (Trips). Some are greeting the new Andean... [Log in to read more]
