More Patent Claims on Genetic Resources of Secret Origin (No. 4)

About the Book

This paper updates a 2014 Third World Network study on the disclosure – or lack thereof – of the origin of genetic resources in patent applications with an associated deposit of biological materials under the Budapest Treaty. The updated study – which looks at patent applications published between July 2013 and November 2015 – finds an even lower rate of disclosure than the earlier analysis, with 88% of applications failing to explicitly divulge the origin of deposited genetic resources and with private companies being less likely than public and non-profit entities to make disclosure. These results underline the need for mandatory disclosure requirements in order to prevent misappropriation of genetic resources, particularly from biodiverse developing countries.


About the author

Edward Hammond directs Prickly Research (www.pricklyresearch.com), a research and writing consultancy based in Austin, Texas, USA.  He has worked on biodiversity and infectious disease issues since 1994. From 1999 to 2008 Hammond directed the Sunshine Project, an international non-governmental organization specializing in biological weapons control.  Hammond was Programme Officer for the Rural Advancement Foundation International (now the ETC Group) from 1995 to 1999.  He holds MS and MA degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was an Inter-American Foundation Masters Fellow.


Contents

Chapter 1.     Introduction
Chapter 2.     Background
Chapter 3.     Method
Chapter 4.     Results
Chapter 5.     Unhelpful "disclosure"
Chapter 6.     Comparison with previous study
Chapter 7.     Conclusion