WIPO Meeting 2024: Conference on genetic resources & associated traditional knowledge begins in Geneva

The final negotiations on the proposed treaty relating to intellectual property, genetic resources and traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources began May 13, 2024 at the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) office in Geneva. Over 1,200 delegates have registered for this 12-day diplomatic conference.    

The meeting is the culmination of 25 years of discussions since the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore was established in 2000. 

According to WIPO, the last negotiations at this scale and size took place almost 30 years ago. The director general, Daren Tang, opened the meeting, requesting participants to “thread the needle” during the coming two weeks.

The treaty aims to enhance the efficacy, transparency and quality of the patent system with regard to genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge; and prevention of patents being granted for inventions that are not novel or inventive.

According to the basic document that would be discussed at the meeting, inventors will have to provide enough details to ensure that someone with the same level of knowledge can reproduce the invention. Also, prior art must generally be disclosed to assist patent examiners in assessing whether the invention is truly novel and non-obvious. The applicant would need to disclose information on the genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge.

Over the next few days, the delegates would work in two groups: First committee will negotiate and agree on all substantive intellectual property provisions and recommend them for adoption by the plenary. The second committee will negotiate and agree on all administrative issues. After the treaty is finalised, it will be sent to the conference plenary for adoption after which it will be open for signature.

Before this, the delegates had met in September 2023. At that time, legal experts had pointed out that the draft text failed to address the problem of the biopiracy of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge using patents. The reason for this is that the text excludes all provisions — biopiracy being one such provision — that is already addressed by other international instruments such as the Nagoya Protocol of the Convention on Biological Diversity; the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework. The treaty also leaves out digital sequence information from its scope.  

Over the next few days, countries would need to negotiate hard to expand the scope and provide sufficient policy space for countries to maintain its current stronger disclosure requirements under its Patents Act. Countries to look out for include the United States, Japan and South Korea, which are generally opposed to any mandatory disclosure requirement and oppose strong sanctions on patent owners for non-compliance.

One of the major problems that impact the negotiations is the lack of a clear definition for ‘traditional knowledge’ which makes it easy to bypass rules. India had provided a definition in a submission saying that: ‘Traditional Knowledge associated with Genetic Resources’ means any knowledge which is evolving, generated in a traditional context, whether documented or not, collectively preserved, and transmitted from generation to generation and including but not limited to know-how, skills, innovations, practices, and learning, that are associated with GRs.

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