1 March 2010: The World Trade Organization (WTO) Council on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) discussed the relationship between intellectual property rights and certain provisions of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS), recently adopted under the auspices of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

The relationship between ABS and intellectual property rights is the most controversial issue in ongoing negotiations on the relationship between the WTO and the CBD as part of the WTO Doha Agenda. A number of countries have argued that the TRIPS Agreement should be amended to require identification of the origin of genetic resources and traditional knowledge in applications for patent protection in order to effectively implement CBD provisions on ABS. Other countries have opposed such an amendment arguing that the relevant provisions of the TRIPS Agreement already grant enough flexibility to accommodate such concerns.

In this first exchange of views after the adoption of the Nagoya Protocol, positions on this issue remained essentially unchanged. The TRIPS Council also could not agree to invite the CBD Secretariat to brief the TRIPS Council on the outcomes of the tenth meeting of the CBD Conference of the Parties, which met in Nagoya, Japan, and adopted the ABS Protocol, among other outcomes. [WTO News on the TRIPS Council]