| Since the second half of the twentieth century, biotechnology, born with the advent of genetic engineering, has provided us with new opportunities to cope with the natural disaster of disease and famine more effectively. And in the near future, biotechnology will play a significant role in dealing with these problems, such as food supply, health, nutrition, medicine, energy, environmental protection, etc., which barricade the human being's development. But, biotechnology is not always optimistic. It has latent risks and unknown results, kindled many controversies regarding. Moreover, its development is companied with great changes to existing legal area: the existing patent system has hindered the development of biotechnology, such as the distinction between a discovery and invention, the new changes of novelty, creativity and utility, etc. All of these request us to reexamine the patent system.In the context of sustainable development, proper intellectual property protection of biotechnology should be the most appropriate instrument in all legal approach, in order to control the development of biotechnology, avoiding the following social problems caused by biotechnology. The rights relating to the biotechnology could be protected, through legal approaches, and the system, based on the aim to protection of the genetic resources, could be set up balancing the sharing of interests derived from biotechnology and genetic resources between the developing countries and developed countries. In addition, a new patent standard have to be formulated to encourage and regulate the biotechnology. In order to protect the owner rights of the genetic resources and the biotechnology, the developing nations, as the original countries of the genetic resources, should take an active part in formulating the international rules, and improving the domestic law systems, so as to abide by the ideology of sustainable development, ensuring the sustainable use of genetic resources. |
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