Seed Health Management for Better Productivity - Govind Ballabh ...

(Seed Health Management for Better Productivity)Seeds: Intellectual PropertyH.S. ChawlaDepartment of Genetics and Plant Breeding, G.B.P.U.A.&T., Pantnagar-263145 (Uttarakhand)The WTO was established on 1 stJanuary 2005 and is responsible for making andenforcing rules for trade between nations. WTO marks a major change in global trade rules. As anorganization, it replaces the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades (GATT), which had been inexistence since 1947. The Eighth Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations under GATT, whichstarted in Uruguay in 1986, was concluded in 1994, leading to the creation of WTO as the newpermanent international trade organization. The role of WTO is much more extensive than that ofGATT, which dealt with trade in goods. Apart from goods, the two other broad areas that WTOcovers are services and intellectual property, which previously belonged to the domestic domain.Accordingly, WTO administers not only the Multilateral Trade Agreements (MTAs) in goods butalso the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the Agreement on Trade RelatedAspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which came into existence with WTO. All theagreements annexed to the Agreement establishing the WTO were signed as part of a packagedeal. Member countries did not have the option of choosing some and rejecting others. Anotherimportant difference with the erstwhile GATT is that WTO has a stronger compliance mechanismthan the GATT. A member’s failure to meet the obligations can invoke retaliation acrossagreements and sectors (Chawla, 2007a).As one of the WTO agreements, TRIPS is binding on all member countries of WTO. TRIPSaims at establishing strong minimum standards for intellectual property rights (IPRs). IPRs can bedefined as the rights given to people over the creation of their minds. They usually give the creatoran exclusive right over the use of his/her creation for a certain period of time. Intellectual propertyincludes copyrights, trademarks, geographical indications, industrial designs, integrated circuitsand trade secrets (Chawla and Singh, 2005). The protection of IPRs is binding and legallyenforceable.IPRs have been created to ensure protection against unfair trade practice. Owners of IPare granted protection by a state and/or country under varying conditions and periods of time. Thisprotection includes the right to: (i) defend their rights to the property they have created; (ii) preventothers from taking advantage of their ingenuity; (iii) encourage their continuing innovativeness andcreativity; and (iv) assure the world a flow of useful, informative and intellectual works.PatentsA patent is a government granted exclusive right to an inventor to prevent others frompracticing i.e. making, using or selling the invention. A patent is a personal property, which can belicensed or sold like any other property. The purpose of a patent is to encourage and develop newinnovations. The Patent Law recognizes the exclusive right of a patentee to gain commercial- 50 -