International Law Protection And Enlightenment Of Traditional Knowledge Related To Genetic Resources

Genetic resources and traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources are national strategic resources with high scientific and economic value.In recent years,the international community has paid constant attention to this.The Convention on Biological Diversity("CBD")requires parties to take legislative,administrative or policy measures to ensure fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilization of traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources.The Nagoya protocol proposes an international framework of "establishing an Access and Benefit-sharing Clearing-House as a means for sharing of information related to access and benefit-sharing." The Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property,Genetic Resources,Traditional Knowledge and Folklore("IGC")under the World Intellectual Property Organization("WIPO")has stepped up the organization of negotiations to ensure the effective protection of traditional knowledge with the goal of agreeing on one or more international legal instruments.In this context,the protection system of genetic resources and traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources has been established in many countries.China is one of the countries with the richest biological genetic resources and traditional knowledge in the world,and also one of the countries suffering from the most serious loss of traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources.It is urgent to establish and improve relevant mechanisms to protect and maintain traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources.This paper takes the traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources as the research object.After introducing the related concepts of traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources and clarifying that traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources is related to and different from genetic resources and traditional knowledge,it is concluded that it is necessary to make a separate study on it and build a protection system matching its characteristics.When discussing it,one of the key and difficult issues in international negotiations is the ownership of traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources.The author puts forward that the obligee of traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources is not necessarily the obligee of genetic resources,nor the beneficiary of traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources.In this paper,the establishment and development of international rules for the protection of traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources are briefly summarized.The Conference of the Parties to CBD and WIPO are two major international institutions that are constantly committed to improving the protection of genetic resources and traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources.However,there are still gap s between the efforts of the two institutions and the legal practice to fill.In order to better protect China's domestic traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources,the author believes that the relevant domestic legislation should be improved.According to the analysis of the author from the international level and the regional and bilateral level,it is both legitimate and reasonable to the transform the convention obligations into domestic legislation for implementation.At present,China's awareness of the protection of genetic resources and traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources is growing.According to the national work plan for strengthening the management of biological genetic resources(2014-2020),many safeguard measures have been issued successively,but there are still problems such as imperfect system and weak legal awareness.For this reason,the author puts forward to take the traditional knowledge documentation,patent disclosure requirements and access and benefit-sharing as the main starting point,take the traditional knowledge documentation as the basis,connect patent disclosure requirements with the prior informed consent and fair benefit-sharing system,and jointly build a complete protection mechanism of traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources.In the last part,the paper focuses on the key issues of traditional knowledge documentation such as the purpose,leading role,registration content,community participation and informed consent,confidentiality and international standards.This paper analyzes which laws and regulations should be introduced into the defensive protection system of patent disclosure,as well as the object,content,trigger point of disclosure and the remedy measures under the non-compliance with obligations,and summarizes the legislative suggestions of access and benefit-sharing.