Global Interllectual Property Laws (patents) & Biocolonialism

Sommario: 1. Premessa. 2. La centralità delle (vecchie e nuove) forme di ruralità nei processi di "glocalizzazione "; 3. La nozione di "contadino" e la titolarità dei diritti sanciti dalla Dichiarazione delle Nazioni Unite del 17 dicembre 2018; 4. La "mappa" dei diritti previsti dalla Dichiarazione; 5. Il diritto alla terra e alle risorse naturali; 6. Il diritto alle sementi. 7. La Dichiarazione sui diritti dei contadini nel quadro del diritto internazionale dei diritti umani; 8. Diritti "biculturali" e diritti dei popoli indigeni; 9. Il paradigma della sovranità alimentare e le principali "aree di frizione"; 10. La Dichiarazione fra codificazione e sviluppo progressivo del diritto internazionale. federalismi.it -ISSN 1826-3534 |Focus Human Rights n. 1/2019 diritti fondamentali dell'Unione europea e alcune delle più recenti convenzioni internazionali in tema di diritti umani 4 . L'adozione di detto strumento di soft law è il frutto di sei anni di negoziato condotto nel quadro del Consiglio per i diritti umani delle Nazioni Unite (UNHRC). Il Consiglio, nel 2012, aveva conferito mandato a un gruppo di lavoro intergovernativo (OEIWG) 5 di negoziare una bozza di dichiarazione sui diritti dei contadini e di coloro che lavorano nelle aree rurali 6 , nella convinzione che fosse necessario introdurre specifici strumenti giuridici internazionali a protezione di persone che costituiscono circa la metà della popolazione mondiale e vivono per lo più in condizioni di indigenza e spesso di denutrizione 7 . È stato, infatti, calcolato che su 821 milioni di persone che soffrono la fame sul nostro pianeta, l'80% vive nelle aree rurali e, al contempo, i piccoli produttori contribuiscono, in media, a produrre il 70% del cibo nel mondo; percentuale che aumenta ad oltre l'80% nei Paesi in via di sviluppo 8 , consentendo, così, sia la sovranità alimentare delle comunità rurali che la resilienza dei sistemi alimentari difronte al fenomeno del cambiamento climatico. Un altro dato significativo che emerge dall'analisi di questo interessante e, per alcuni versi, originale processo decisionale internazionale appena conclusosi, è che l'impulso per l'adozione della Dichiarazione ONU è stato fornito da La Via Campesina, come è noto l'organismo più rappresentativo del movimento dei contadini attualmente esistente a livello mondiale. Riunendo 182 fra sindacati e organizzazioni contadine presenti in oltre 81 Paesi, questo movimento rappresenta almeno 200 milioni di persone ed è impegnato attivamente nella promozione di modelli agricoli solidali deputati a favorire l'emancipazione 4 S. VEZZANI, Il progetto di Dichiarazione sui diritti degli agricoltori

Traditional Knowledge (TK) is a central component for the daily life of millions of people in developing countries, including India where access to “modern” health care services and medicine is limited due to economic and cultural constraints. Some TK is codified, that is, formalized in some way (eg Ayurveda) however, a great part of it is non-codified, such as, “folk”, “tribal” or “indigenous” medicine which is based on traditional beliefs, norms and practices accumulated during centuries old experiences of trial and error, and passed to successive generations through oral tradition. The protection under Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) of traditional and indigenous knowledge has received growing attention since the adoption of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992. However, the concept of Protection in case of TK is understood and interpreted in different ways by different groups; hence there exist two schools of thought-as per one belief protection essentially means to exclude the unauthorized use by third parties; whereas others regard protection as a tool to preserve traditional knowledge from uses that may erode it or negatively affect the life or culture of the communities who are in possession of such knowledge and have developed / applied it.

FROM THE WHITE HOUSE to the World Trade Organization (WTO), heated debates have flared up around the compulsory licensing of COVID-19 vaccine technologies, producing a flurry of op-eds in all of the major US newspapers. Should patent protections, these op-eds ask, be temporarily relaxed to enable developing countries to produce and distribute cheaper shots to ensure timely global immunization? Can compulsory licenses actually achieve that goal, or would the efforts of developing countries be thwarted by other constraints, like limited production capacity, equipment, and skills? Conversely, would the granting of such licenses stymie medical innovation?
These exchanges provide a window onto today’s patent politics and the chasm between the financial interests of the Global North and the health needs of the Global South. They also highlight the rhetorical dimensions of health policy discourse as it plays out in the media, not through scholarly articles and data sets but in compact op-eds.

Copyright remains the cardinal bridge between creation and access to knowledge and knowledge-based materials. However, the issue of copyright awareness has now become a global concern. Since tertiary education revolves around the use of other people’s copyrighted works, this study seeks to investigate the level of copyright awareness at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in the legitimate use of copyrighted materials based on the principle of “permitted use,” without infringing on the rights of the author. The study drew participants of 500 students, the Deputy Registrar (Academic and Students Affair) and the University Librarian to respond to questionnaire and interviews. The study revealed that copyright awareness at KNUST is not up to the level expected due to the fact that the university does not have copyright awareness policy to effectively regulate, monitor and protect its intellectual property, academic and institutional values as well as to defend its teaching, research and service mission.

In Turkey, most university administrators and academic staff members are not yet fully aware of intellectual property rights (IPRs). Researchers often have difficulty in licensing opportunities that can provide additional revenue streams due to the lack of either strategic policies set by the administration or a dedicated technology transfer (or licensing) office (TTO). This paper attempts to shed some light
on the relationship between intellectual property rights and licensing awareness in Turkish universities as well as how this is affected by the lack of TTOs. Semi-structured exploratory interviews were conducted with 45 researchers in two different faculties (Medicine and Engineering). Results show that most of the participants, including a higher-than-expected percentage from the Faculty of Engineering,
were not aware of the importance of the technology that they had developed in terms of licensing and royalties that they could earn. In conclusion, it can be said that universities in Turkey have to undergo a policy change regarding managerial issues, especially with regards to Technology Transfer Offices. Increasing the visibility of technology transfer options and agreements, as well as further research on this topic, is recommended.

Cet article est la transcription légèrement modifiée d'une intervention faite à Grenoble le 27 janvier 2017 dans le cadre du séminaire Empire(s), organisé par l'ILCEA de Grenoble https://empires.hypotheses.org/ Je vais vous parler d'un livre qui a eu un très grand succès dans les milieux de la gauche radicale lorsqu'il est sorti et qui jouit encore d'une estime certaine. Empire 1 , paru en 2000, avant la destruction des Twins Towers, est un livre ambitieux, qui réinjecte dans une vision marxiste de la société des concepts empruntés aux études culturelles, à Foucault ou à Deleuze. On pourrait parler de l'utilisation discutable que Negri et Hardt y font du concept de biopouvoir ou celui de souveraineté, de l'opposition également problématique entre discipline et contrôle, et plus généralement d'un systématisme lié à une vision que certains ont qualifié d'étapiste. Ici, je m'attacherai seulement à une des idées phares : pour Negri et Hardt, avec l'empire, l'impérialisme et le colonialisme sont devenus obsolètes. Et c'est la critique d'un philosophe colombien, Santiago Castro Gómez 2 , que j'exposerai ici, auteur qui met en question le bien fondé de cette certitude. Negri et Hardt et la fin du colonialisme. Negri et Hardt proposent de comprendre la post-modernité grâce au concept d'Empire, qui renvoie moins à une structure politique qu'à un rapport entre un pouvoir d'un type nouveau, qu'ils identifient comme gouvernementalité et un sujet possible, les multitudes. C'est un système en réseau, lisse, sans centre véritable, caractérisé par l'effacement des anciennes souverainetés nationales au profit de ce qu'ils nomment la souveraineté impériale. Il passe par des stratégies de contrôle des populations qui n'ont plus grand-chose à voir avec les disciplines de la phase antérieure, lorsque colonialisme et état-nation fonctionnaient de concert. Pour eux le colonialisme, s'il commence au XIX siècle, s'est inséré dans ce projet de normalisation et de discipline qui avait été celui des états nations à partir du XVIII siècle. Les auteurs voient dans leur avènement l'affirmation d'une tendance contre-révolutionnaire qu'ils opposent à l'aspiration à la liberté et au désir propre à l'humanisme du XVI siècle. Dès le XVIII siècle, ces états s'attachèrent à produire une subjectivité européenne bourgeoise, blanche, masculine, patriarcale, civilisée. Et à discipliner les corps de la classe laborieuse qu'il fallait mettre au travail. Il fallait un envers pour cette subjectivité en construction, on le trouva dans le Sauvage puis, dans le Barbare des Amériques. Les auteurs gardent la chronologie traditionnelle de la colonisation. Pour eux, elle commence au XIX siècle puisqu'elle est liée à la compétition entre états nations, et et aux contradictions du capitalisme industriel. Elle s'appuiera sur cet ethos occidental inséparable de l' exclusion de l'Autre.

PLEASE CITE AS Noto La Diega G (2016) Patents on Computer-Related Inventions in India. Intel Prop Rights. S1:009. doi: 10.4172/2375-4516.1000S1-009

In India, sec. 3(k) of the Patents Act 1970 clearly excludes the patentability of computer programmes per se. For many years, the regime of computer-implemented inventions has been unclear, until the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks (the India Intellectual Property Office) issued its Guidelines on the examination of computer-related inventions. Notably, this gave rise the civil society’s protests; indeed, there was the fear that the government was surreptisciously allowing the patentability of computer programmes per se. Therefore, the guidelines have been withdrawn and recently a new version has been published. It openly reaffirms the exclusion of the software patents and introduces a three-step test to determine the applicability of sec. 3(k) of the Patents Act to computer-related inventions. This opinion focuses the new guidance, by placing it in the context of the leading role of India in the technological and social developments revolving around the Internet of Things.

The term “patent”, a familiar word in the invention world and for the ‘average Joe’ has the public dreaming while it generates envy, even sometimes jealousy. An invention could bring respect for a newly found ingenuity but it could also provide a map to a buried ‘treasure’. For many, “patent” or “invention” can be synonymous of riches and royalties like winning a big jackpot in a national lottery.

But the truth is so different.
The problem is not to invent as many of us keep coming up with good ideas but the commercialization of this new product or concept.

The first challenge for the inventor is to overcome the initial impulse to dismiss its invention. Time and again when one gets an easy flowing idea, the first reaction is to think that it has already been created.
The second feeling is that the idea does not seem to be so great.

Beyond those typical psychological and emotional perceptions, the key is certainly to verify the true novelty of the object in order to label it as innovative.

The majority of approved patents will not be commercialized. Therefore it is possible that this invention has already been discovered but kept unknown due to the lack of production or simply because of the absence of marketing and distribution close to home.

Surely the internet now offers accessible options to research more easily existing products across the globe. However this is not sufficient.

Once this first investigative phase is concluded, the neophyte inventor will make sure to protect this new idea. After facing the doubts, then the paranoia takes over. Our creator finds the idea so brilliant that the entire world is surely out there to get it, to steal it. It is not wrong but it is not all accurate.

Usually, our inventor will rely on a well-known and recognized organization for being the sole but necessary ‘official’ establishment, like in the U.S.A. with the ‘USPTO’ (United States Patent and Trademark Office), or in France with ‘INPI’ (National Institute of the Industrial Property).
Those national bodies are overseen by their Governments and are under the international tutelage of a worldwide association of similar institutions from various countries, called ‘WIPO’ (World Intellectual Property Organization) based in Switzerland.

All seems well in the best of worlds.

However it is not the case, quite the opposite indeed.

From this point on, the hassles of our inventor only got started.

These organizations benefit from a belief rooted for ages in our collective consciousness that they are above criticism as solid models of perfection for reliability, confidentiality and proficiency. Brilliantly they have managed to appear as the necessary channel for a protection while vanquishing any suspicion of monopoly from a dangerous competitive environment they fear.

For most people, invention = patent = ‘USPTO’ (United States Patent and Trademark Office) or ‘INPI’ in France, or some other national and governmental institute linked to ‘WIPO’. It is a sure and definite fact. However we will soon see that it is not a reality.

Do make the difference between the terms “patent” and “invention”.

A patent is some kind of certificate issued by an international organization, ‘WIPO’, via a national and governmental institute (or office).

An invention is an intellectual product.

If a patent needs an invention to exist, the reverse is not true.

This article tries to demonstrate that the traditional peoples and Brazil have been targets of biopiracy of natural environmental resources and their associated traditional knowledge, without being benefited with the resources obtained with the exploitation of such resources by foreign companies. Biopiracy is one of the forms of biocolonialism, called “extractive biocolonialism”. It discusses the deficits and virtues of international legislation that seeks to combat biopiracy, as well as the Brazilian legal system that aims to prevent it and combat it. The theoretical-documentary methodology of the deductive type was used, based on doctrinal and legal analyzes.

Keywords: biopiracy; biocolonialism; patent; natural resources; traditional knowledge.

RESUMO: O presente trabalho procura demonstrar que os povos tradicionais e o Brasil têm sido alvos de biopirataria de recursos ambientais naturais e de seus conhecimentos tradicionais associados, sem serem beneficiados com os recursos obtidos com a exploração de tais recursos por empresas estrangeiras. A biopirataria é uma das formas do biocolonialismo, chamado de extrativo. Discutem-se os déficits e virtudes da legislação internacional que procura combater a biopirataria, bem como o sistema jurídico brasileiro que visa preveni-la e combatê-la. Utilizou-se a metodologia teórica-documental do tipo dedutiva, com o emprego de análises doutrinárias e legais.

Palavras-chave: biopirataria; biocolonialismo; patente; recursos naturais; conhecimentos tradicionais.

REFERÊNCIA COMPLETA:
GOMES, Magno Federici; SAMPAIO, José Adércio Leite. Biopirataria e conhecimentos tradicionais: as faces do biocolonialismo e sua regulação. Revista Veredas do Direito, Belo Horizonte, n. 34, v. 16, p. 91-121, jan./abr. 2019. Disponível em: <http://www.domhelder.edu.br/revista/index.php/veredas/article/view/1274>. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18623/rvd.v16i34.1274.
(Direito A1). ISSN 1806-3845 (Impresso) ISSN 2179-8699 (Eletrônico)

In the development of creativity, innovation, patenting, and licensing in technology-based economies, different environments affect significantly the success of the new startups at the universities. Therefore, interactive ecosystems, where need assessments, ethnographic field studies, observations, and focus groups are strategically used, have significantly transformed and transcended the mindset of the participants, especially for those who have great potential in life sciences. In this study, what the effects of different interactive ecosystems are on improving creativity, innovation, patenting, and licensing is critically transferred by showing different real examples in life
sciences. Additionally, how ethnographic studies affects the participants in the process of the creating innovative products is given in the interactive ecosystem in which the target participants have become more active by developing empathy. By developing a new interactive ecosystem, specifically in the hospitals, participants’ behaviors and attitudes have changed and they have become more engaged to the problems and the needs of the patients.
Hence, in this workshop, the translational research environment is taken as an interactive environment
to show the sustainable circles from the patients’ bed to the laboratories, from the laboratories to the
TTOs to have their patents, and from the attorney to the startups and to corporates, in which the
licensing period is critically short comparing to the other systems.
In order to understand the reliability and validity of the system, the phenomenological interpretive
analysis is used to investigate, in a new interactive ecosystem, which is the translational research
center. In that way, mainly the graduate level students’ and the experienced researchers’ behaviors
and attitudes are analyzed by training them ethnographic studies tools in order to improve empathy.
The results show that, those who have more empathy comparatively than those who do not have, have
better results in developing creativity, innovation, patenting, and licensing since their products are
directly related to the touchable and urgent needs. It is no doubt that, the participants have learned
how to make marketing research and developing business models in order to be profitable for themselves and for their universities by means of royalties. The four different studies show that only 6 weeks is enough to become more active, engaged, and empathetic in order to develop new and technologically innovative products and services. The
interactive ecosystems help them to be more aware about the needs, especially in life sciences due to
the fact that all the stakeholders, doctors, patients, nurses, other medical people, and patients’ close relatives and friends are close each other to share their thoughts, ideas, and needs. Additionally, new ICT gadgets help them to be much closer in terms of the knowledge transfer. Hence, the awareness of the participants help to collect right data to transform to the new products and services which can be
licensed easily.
In this workshop, the real cases will be given in der to help the audience to develop new interactive ecosystems. The behaviors and attitudes of the participants change because their selected attention and awareness are improved. The interactive communication and teamwork capacity have increased to developed innovative products and services, which have high market values.

In The Consequences of Modernity (1990) Anthony Giddens characterises the present time as ‘late modernity’ or ‘high modernity’, rather than post-modernity. For Giddens, the essence of modernity is its dynamism — a dynamism of such pace and scope as to be discontinuous with traditional social orders. He argues that one characteristic of modernity is the emergence of four institutions: capitalism, industrialism, surveillance and military power. Figure 10.1 sets out these four basic institutional dimensions of modernity and indicates their interrelations. Innovations in science and technology generate utopian and dystopian expectations, which are sources of dynamism for each of these institutions. For industrialism, such innovations suggest new ways of controlling nature; for capitalism, new avenues of capitalist expansion; for surveillance, more penetrating technologies of observation and monitoring; and for military power, new ways of perpetrating violence. Elsewhere, we have applied Giddens’s framework to analyse how utopian and dystopian expectations of genetic engineering are shaping modernity (see Wheale and McNally, 1994; McNally and Wheale, 1994).

We study the impact of suspected market manipulation, including end-of-day manipulation and insider trading around information leakage events, on patents based on a sample of 9 countries spanning the years 2003-2010. The data indicate that end-of-day dislocation mitigates the number of patents and citations received, due to the associated short-termism of the firm’s orientation, long-term harm to a firm’s equity values, and commensurate reduced incentives for employees to innovate. Unlike prior literature that shows a negative relation between patenting and liquidity in the U.S. in an earlier time period, we observe a robust and significantly positive effect of liquidity on patenting in the U.S. and across the 9 countries in our sample over each of the 8 years studied. The positive effect of liquidity on innovation, however, is mitigated by the harmful presence of end-of-day dislocation. The data also confirm the importance of country-level factors such as intellectual property rights across countries that encourage patenting. Our findings are robust to numerous robustness checks on subsamples of the data, propensity score matching analyses, difference-in-differences tests for firms with and without dislocation, among other things.