Issues related to a possible amendment of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to be in line with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) remained contentious at the TRIPS Council meeting held on 17 June 2008.

Such amendment would require the disclosure of origin of biological resources or traditional knowledge in patent applications, but countries disagree over whether this amendment is the most effective way to stop the misappropriation of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge. Countries also disagreed over the issue of “parallelism,” which refers to the question of whether certain intellectual property issues, including disclosure, should be included in forthcoming horizontal negotiations on market opening in the agricultural and industrial sectors. Proponents of disclosure and parallelism, including most developing countries, emphasized that their proposal on disclosure is supported by over two-thirds of the members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and urged the Council to proceed with text-based negotiations. The Philippines and South Africa spoke in favor of disclosure but against parallelism. Opponents of both parallelism and disclosure, including Argentina, Australia, Canada, Korea, Japan, Singapore and the US, argued that addressing controversial intellectual property issues would jeopardize the negotiations on agriculture and industrial products. The TRIPS Council also discussed the issue of granting observer status to the CBD, and noted that consultations on this matter will be held with the CBD Secretariat.
Links to further information
Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest, 18 June 2008
IP Watch, 9 June 2008
IP Watch, 10 June 2008