New Book: Ways To Address CBD, Nagoya Protocol Hurdles For Public Research

By Catherine Saez

A new book provides ways for public research to avoid legal battles over genetic resources in the fields of agriculture, biomedicine, environmental management and microbiology by making best use of an international protocol on access to genetic resources and benefit-sharing.

According to the authors of “Governing Digitally Integrated Genetic Resources, Data, and Literature: Global Intellectual Property Strategies for a Redesigned Microbial Research Commons,” the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has created both constraints and opportunity for public research institutions.

“The microbial research community now has the opportunity to redesign its existing research infrastructure at the multilateral level as to better exploit the favorable opportunities afforded by the Nagoya Protocol, while avoiding the constraints of the bilateral approach as tightened by that same Protocol,” the book says.

The book proposes a “novel contractual framework for ‘Facilitating Transnational Exchanges of Genetic Resources within a Redesigned Microbial Research Infrastructure,’” and in particular the use of a standardized material transfer agreement “embodying a ‘take and pay rule’ that would enable unfettered public research uses of microbial materials having no known or likely commercial applications at the time of deposit in participating culture collections.”

The book is authored by Jerome Reichman, Bunyan S. Womble professor of Law, Duke Law School; Paul Uhlir, former director of the Board on Research Data and Information at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC; and Tom Dedeurwaerdere, director of the Biodiversity Governance Unit and professor of Philosophy of Science at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.