McManis, Charles R. --- "Human rights as a contraint on intellectual property rights: the case of patent and plant variety protection rights, genetic resources and traditional knowledge" [2010] ELECD 340; in Grosheide, Willem (ed), "Intellectual Property and Human Rights" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Intellectual Property and Human Rights

Editor(s): Grosheide, Willem

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848444478

Section: Chapter 13

Section Title: Human rights as a contraint on intellectual property rights: the case of patent and plant variety protection rights, genetic resources and traditional knowledge

Author(s): McManis, Charles R.

Number of pages: 28

Extract:

13. Human rights as a constraint on
intellectual property rights: the case
of patent and plant variety protection
rights, genetic resources and
traditional knowledge
Charles R. McManis*
One of the great questions of our time is how to promote global economic
development, while at the same time preserving the local biological and
cultural diversity of `this fragile earth, our island home.'1 The international
debate over how to reconcile these two seemingly conflicting goals has
increasingly focused on the interplay among three international agreements
that have entered into force during the past 15 years.2


* Thomas & Karole Green Professor of Law and Director, Intellectual Property
& Technology Law Program, Washington University School of Law.
1 Book of Common Prayer 370 (1977).
2 The international agreements relevant to the legal protection of TK, which is
the principal focus of this chapter, range from those that are essentially aspirational in
character to those that impose concrete legal obligations backed by international
enforcement mechanisms. In the former category are such agreements as the UN
International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which entered into
force in 1976, the International Labor Organization's Convention (No. 169) concern-
ing Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, which entered into force
in 1991, and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which entered into force
in 1993, and is the first international agreement to make explicit reference to the protec-
tion of traditional knowledge. For a discussion of the first two treaties, see below note
24 and ...