Filling the Gap: From Early International Legal Agreements Pertaining to Global Science to New Implementation Perspectives in the Context of the Nagoya Protocol

Abstract

"In the first part the paper will analyze which tools and perspectives within these international instruments can foster and promote global scientific research and access to materials, as needed by the research community, in a balanced way with other interests at stake: intellectual property rights and the right of States to regulate access to natural resources and to benefit from the use of them. In the second part this paper explores the practices and models for global sharing of basic knowledge assets for scientific research. Two major institutional models dominate this debate, the first one envisioning contractual negotiations and exclusive ownership rights and the second one favouring public domain--like conditions and non--exclusive property right regimes. The paper compares these models in the case study of microbiology research, concluding that public-domain like conditions for access to basic knowledge assets and abroad interpretation of the notion of non-commercial use are both possible within the framework of the Nagoya Protocol and necessary for the pursuit of global scientific research. In the third part the paper will discuss some of the implementation concerns of the Nagoya Protocol, drawing inspiration from the other international agreements analyzed and the outcomes of the case study on microbiology research, for filling the implementation gaps in the Protocol related to specific needs of the scientific research community."