Related developments
Tanzania scientist calls for review of country’s biosafety law
Speaking at the Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB) in Tanzania, which took place on 28 February 2013 at the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH), Dr. Joseph Ndunguru presented a paper on agricultural biotechnology for Africa's development. He believes the use of agricultural biotechnology fits within a target of increasing agricultural productivity and ensuring food security as stipulated by Tanzanian policy and development strategy.IP-Watch reports on a series of meetings on IP and innovation in Africa that recently took place in Tanzaniahttp://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/article/default.asp?ID=10751(ISAAA Crop Biotech Update, 13/3/2013)
22/05/2013
Finding appropriate IP policies for Africa
Intellectual Property Watchreports on the efforts made by several countries in Africa to find appropriate intellectual property policies and discussed at the Africa IP conference (February 2013). The issue of applying intellectual property rights to indigenous knowledge, in order to protect holders of this knowledge from exploitation, while at the same time leveraging it for development was a vibrant thread of debate throughout the conference. IP-Watch.org also reports on the March 2013 workshop 'Practical Approaches to IP Utilization and Protection in Africa' co-organised by the US Commerce Department and the African Intellectual Property Group (AIPG), a new pro-IP association of stakeholders. Participants there emphasised the need to set an Africa IP agenda, more research on the impact of strong IPR protection, and to debunk the idea of a 'one-size-fits-all' IP policy for Africa. More recently, IP-Watch.org wrote about the draft protocol for the protection of new varieties of plants proposed by an inter-governmental African regional economic community, the Southern African Development Community (SADC). It reported that the Plant Variety Protection (PVP) draft protocol is provoking the ire of civil society concerned about its potential impact on small farmers, and the lack of consultation of farmers. According to the draft protocol, plant breeders' rights 'in the region will allow farmers access to a wide range of improved varieties to contribute to the attainment of the regional goal of economic development and food security'. The civil society groups said that the protocol would not develop a suitable regime to the needs of SADC member states and their farmers. The latter rely heavily on farm saved seed, exchanges with relatives and neighbours, bartering with other farmers or local markets to access seeds. (Intellectual Property Watch, March/April 2013)
10/04/2013
Research4Life publishers extend open and low-cost access partnership through 2020
Over 6,000 institutions in more than 100 developing countries will continue to benefit from free or low cost access to peer-reviewed online content from the world’s leading scientific, technical and medical publishers. Research4Life is the collective name for four public-private partnerships; Access to Research Initiative (HINARI, WHO), Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA, FAO), Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE, UNEP), and Online Access to Research for Development and Innovation (ARDI, WIPO) which seek to provide the developing world with access to critical scientific research. In November 2012 the Research4Life partners announced that they had agreed to extend their partnership through 2020.(Research4Life via AIMS, 14/11/2012)
8/02/2013
Farmers in East Africa not consulted on draft policy for Plant Variety Protection
East African farmers petitioned the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO), following the latter’s proposed draft of a regional harmonised policy and legal framework on plant variety protection. The draft policy will make it mandatory for small-scale farmers in East Africa to buy all their seeds from multinational firms and stop using seeds from past harvests. The farmers’ group faults the process used to develop the draft policy and the negative impact its adoption would have on small-scale farmers, food security and on agricultural biodiversity. The draft policy will give powers to ARIPO regional offices to grant and administer breeders’ rights on behalf of all the contracting states. It also paves the way for the African Union (AU) to start discussions on the cultivation, import and export of genetically modified crops in Africa at the next AU summit to be held in January 2013. Observers and civil society representatives have criticized these developments as they have had little access to the negotiation table and are asking ARIPO to undertake comprehensive consultations with all relevant stakeholders and desist from rushing governments into adopting the draft legislation.(IP-Watch, 5/11/2012 and The East African, 16/12/2012)
8/02/2013
Institutional Repository Development: A case study of KARI and KAINet
This presentation illustrates the advantages of the employment of AgriDrupal and AgriOceanDSpace for the two repositories: KAINet (Kenya Agricultural Information Network) and the institutional repository of the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI). KAINet is a national repository of scientific publications with a focus on agriculture and forestry. It was modelled on WebAGRIS and includes around 35,000 records from which most documents are not openly available. The initial problems with the setup, the service provider server and limited functionalities could be solved by the implementation of secure and manageable tools such as AgriOceanDSpace and AgriDrupal that are available on the AIMS platform. For this reason KAINet was moved to AgriDrupal and the KARI repository was facilitated by the implementation of AgriOceanDSpace. The KAINet team also faced challenges during the implementations, for example, the absence of institutional policies that support open access and the low awareness of copyright issues within the organisation. Another obstacle was the absence of appropriate information management skills. As a preparation for other organisations who want to implement a repository, the speaker underlined the importance of system comparability, technical ICT skills and collaboration within the organisation.
23/11/2012
Opening access to agriculture research products: the experience of CGIAR
This presentation, given during the AIMS Open Access Week (October 2012) identified the current barriers to opening access faced by the CGIAR consortium. The main ones are: Lack of common and consistently-applied standards, too few specialised professional staff, inadequate technical infrastructure, and too few incentives to curate and share data and knowledge. The key activities that led the consortium to start opening access to its data and knowledge products included the CGIAR Principles on Management of Intellectual Assets, which provided a good legal framework and enabling environment. This policy recognised the CGIAR research outputs (including data and data sets) as international public goods. The Triple-A framework (Availability, Accessibility and Applicability of the CGIAR Research Outputs) provided a strategy of making CGIAR research available widely, with a certain success.(via FAO AIMS, 23/10/2012)
23/11/2012
Access barriers relegating Africa to invisible research contributor
Talking to Engineering News Online, the South African Minister of Science and Technology, Derek Hanekom, at the Berlin 10 Open Access Conference, in Stellenbosch said that the growth of research in Africa and the ability to find solutions to the continent’s problems will remain limited if African academic libraries continue to have restricted access to official research information. The expense of many academic journals, particularly in science and medicine, limited countries’ access to essential research information. ‘Access barriers sometimes even result in critical, relevant knowledge and research outputs generated in Africa being published in journals overseas, journals that are not affordable to African academic libraries’. He believed that the adoption of open access principles to allow scientific information to be more freely available on the Internet and by removing the financial barriers to accessing scientific information ‘is one of the most progressive ways of growing and showcasing African research’. Read the complete article on this webpage.(Engineering News Online, 8/11/2012)
23/11/2012
The hard path to open source bioinnovation
For centuries farmers optimized their crops and livestock by breeding and selection, and retained the best plants or animals and shared the seed or lines with other farmers, who then further improved on them. This represents the conventional model of open-source licensing: where a party can use and develop a product, and then use that technology to profit as long as they do not block others improving upon that technology. In the 20th century the business model of seed supply drifted away from open source. The many legal changes that occurred in many countries gradually shifted emphasis onto private control of collections of genetic traits, or ‘germplasm’. As plant varieties became privatized and commoditised, corporations began to take more control of the innovation process. Economic and reputational incentives began to overshadow philosophical considerations of how publicly funded research translates into public good. Sharing of technologies was deemphasized.Read the rest of this in-depth analysis on the strengthening of the ‘Agricultural Open Source Infrastructure’ from Science Progress (20/8/2012).http://scienceprogress.org/2012/08/the-hard-path-to-open-source-bioinnovation/
26/09/2012
Ivorian agricultural scientists open up their research
More than a dozen agricultural research institutes in Côte d'Ivoire have agreed to open up access to their research results and raise farmers' awareness of their work through a shared online platform. The aim is to increase the uptake of new and existing technologies and research findings, and eventually to boost agricultural production in the country and West African region, SciDev reports (14/8/2012).
14/09/2012
Research4Life greatly expands peer reviewed research available to developing world
Over 7 000 Elsevier books are now accessible through HINARI, AGORA, OARE, and ARDI. Research4Life partners announced that the content available through its collaborative public-private partnership has increased since 2011 to reach 17 000 peer reviewed scientific journals, books and databases. Research4Life provides over 6 000 institutions in more than 100 developing countries with free or low cost access to peer-reviewed online content from the world’s leading scientific, technical and medical publishers. The inclusion of Elsevier’s entire SciVerse ScienceDirect ebook collection follows the publisher’s incremental contributions of 1 700 clinical and science and technology books in 2011. Elsevier also makes available over 2,000 electronic journals and SciVerse Scopus, an abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature with over 19,500 titles from 5,000 publishers. (R4L, 16/05/2012)
11/07/2012
Differences plague WIPO negotiations on traditional knowledge
The 21st session of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Intergovernmental Committee on Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge, and Folklore (IGC) met from 16-20 April 2012 in Geneva, Switzerland. Negotiations at the WIPO over a legal instrument intended to protect traditional knowledge (TK) saw mixed progress. Though a draft text will be forwarded to WIPO’s General Assembly that includes some areas of convergence, various disagreements on the definition of TK, its beneficiaries, and the scope of a potential instrument marred the week-long discussions. Member states were unable to find common ground on whether a definition of traditional knowledge should be broad in scope or more detailed and descriptive. South Africa underlined the need to define TK as ‘dynamic and evolving’. Bolivia, for its part, asked that TK be defined as ‘inalienable, indivisible and imprescriptible’, as TK “cannot be given away by indigenous people, it cannot be fragmented, it is a unit”. Some developed countries, however, urged members to instead adopt a broader definition without descriptive terms. (ICTSD; 25/04/2012)
4/06/2012
Researchers crack genetic codes for medicinal plant species
Researchers from across Canada, led by the University of Calgary's Dr. Peter Facchini and Dr. Vincent Martin of Concordia University in Montréal, have identified the genetic makeup for 75 medicinal plant species and are making the codes available to scientists and the public on-line. The genetic blueprints have potential applications in the pharmaceutical, natural health product, food and chemical industries. Plants contain specialized enzymes encoded by their unique genes that make them effective producers of medicines, flavours, fragrances, pigment, insecticides and other chemicals. The PhytoMetaSyn Project (Synthetic Biosystems for the Production of High Value Plant Metabolites) which started in 2009 is expected to have the entire set of genetic codes available by February 2012 (half the set is already available, and codes are added as they become available). (Eurekalert, 14/9/2011)
2/11/2011
African millet gets international commercial interest and fears patent grab
The African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) has focused several recent reports on new international commercial interest and patent claims on the African native crop sorghum. This includes the issues raised by the proposed widespread use of sorghum for the production of biofuels. This report extends ACB’s examination of new international commercial interest in African native crops, by including a focus on pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) and related African native grass species in the Pennisetum genus.Pearl millet, the most important African Pennisetum economically and for food security, shows promise to foreign researchers for a variety of applications. The paper explains that a foreign government project in South Africa working on pearl millet is seeking to stimulate development of the seed industry in Africa by replacing traditional varieties with commercial hybrids, and by creating pearl millets for specific uses including poultry feed and for biofuels.According to the paper, the ongoing unchecked provision of African farmers’ varieties of pearl millet to the US INTSORMIL (International Sorghum and Millet Collaborative Research Support) Program, without the use of appropriate material transfer agreements, seems alarming and there are fears that over time these practices are likely to result in biopiracy. It appears the seed transfer arrangements do not enjoy the protections and benefit sharing of the multilateral system under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA).
18/03/2011
'Traditional Knowledge & Biopiracy: The Peruvian Maca Root' - PIIPA Monthly Case Study Series (Feb.2011)
Maca root is an herbaceous, perennial, cultivated crop that is native to the Andes in Peru. Maca plants have medicinal values that include increasing libido, stamina, fertility, and alleviating insomnia. For centuries, the people in the Andes have been using the maca root for its medicinal properties and now maca is exported around the world. The Peruvian people’s use of maca for medicinal purposes is an example of traditional knowledge (TK).The National Institute for the Defense of Competition and Intellectual Property (INDECOPI) is a Peruvian government agency charged with the responsibility for market promotion and protection of consumer rights, as well as ensuring honest competition while protecting all forms of intellectual property Including TK. Concern about possible biopiracy of the maca root is one reason why Peru created this task force. INDECOPI discovered that there were over 100 patents directed to inventions related to Peruvian indigenous plants, the maca root or that included maca derivatives in the patent claims. With the help of PIIPA’s pro bono assistance volunteer (the US firm of Sterne Kessler Goldstein and Fox, PLLC in Washington DC “SKGF”) focus was placed on U.S. patents directed to extracts of maca plants. The Working Group and SKGF worked with scientists and maca exporters to assemble published documentation on maca preparation and the use of maca prior to the filing dates of most of the patents in question. In 2002, the working group also filed an opposition to an EU patent application with the European Patent Office (EPO). In 2010, the EPO rejected the European patent application, in part due to the documents provided by INDECOPI and the Working Group, which showed prior use. Currently, the National Anti-Biopiracy Commission will submit a request for reexamination of the related patent granted in the U.S. based on the rejection of the European patent as an argument.
23/02/2011
Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore - World Intellectual Property Organization
Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore - Third Intersessional Working Group, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Draft agenda suggested discussion topics are, among others: “Disclosure of Origin or Source of Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge in Patent Applications” “Proposal of the African Group on Genetic Resources and Future Work” “Genetic Resources: Draft Intellectual Property Guidelines for Access and Equitable Benefit-Sharing: Updated Version” Geneva, Switzerland, 28 February to 4 March 2011, More information can be found on this WIPO webpage.
Monday 28 February 2011 - Friday 04 March 2011
The relationship between IP, technology transfer, and development
A recent analysis of the link between intellectual property rights, technology transfer and development, conducted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) shows that in order to foster development through technology, it is necessary to put into place an efficient and flexible intellectual property rights system and to promote local innovation. This study draws on research and on answers to a questionnaire sent to regional universities and research and development centres. (Source: IP-Watch, August 2010)
5/11/2010
BioMed analysis: Keep traditional knowledge open but safe
Databases of traditional medicines can help protect against biopiracy while opening the doors for new drug discovery. Traditional biological knowledge tends to be uncomfortably juxtaposed between two worlds — the ancient, where knowledge was freely shared by all, and the modern, where it is jealously protected through patents. But the past few months have seen milestones in bridging this divide as the European Patent Office (EPO) revoked a patent for a traditional remedy extracted from the roots of endemic South African plants. A growing trend exists to incorporate traditional knowledge into modern patent applications. (Source: SciDev.net, Priya Shetty, 24 February 2010)
22/03/2010
Intellectual property vital for agricultural innovation
With the global population set to exceed 9 billion by 2050 and limited natural resources, food production needs to double if we are to provide food security. Innovation in agriculture will be central to finding ways to help farmers grow more food on less land. Crop protection products already help farmers to increase their yields per hectare and innovation in this area promises to further increase their efficacy. However, plant science companies invest significant amounts in many years of research to develop these products and without intellectual property protection, the incentive to invest in such innovation is severely diminished. Protection of safety and efficacy data along with data confidentiality is a key tool to foster this innovation. Javier Fernandez of CropLife Latin America explains the importance of protection of regulatory data and its relevance to the bid for food security. (Source: Intellectual Property Watch, 29 September 2009)
4/11/2009
Fate of traditional knowledge a key decision at WIPO assemblies
The World Intellectual Property Organization must be able to set norms for innovation, from the latest development in technology to traditional knowledge systems, if it is to retain its relevance in policymaking, said its director general at the opening of the UN agency’s annual General Assemblies today. The normative agenda is not progressing, and there are blockages in several areas which pose several major risks for the organization. Two areas in particular were cited: the protection of traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, and in the future of copyright in the digital environment. (Source: IP watch, 22 September 2009)
20/10/2009
UN agency ignores indigenous approach to knowledge protection
Communities over the world risk losing control over their traditional knowledge because a UN agency insists on using existing intellectual property standards for managing access to the information. This is among the findings of the first detailed comparative study of customary approaches to protecting and sharing traditional knowledge and biological resources, published June 29 by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). The findings come ahead of a meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organization that aims to develop rules for protecting rights over traditional knowledge, such as indigenous knowledge about medicinal plants, which conventional intellectual property laws do not cover. (IIED, 29 June 2009)
23/07/2009
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- April 2013 K4D Newsletter
- 6th Africa Science Week and FARA General Assembly Side Event: Programme for Finals of 3rd Africa-wide Science competitions
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