Additional New White Paper from IP2 concerning the Nagoya Protocol

Our white paper „10 years of the Nagoya Protocol“ from late 2023 explains the background, summarizes the current implementation into national law and provides an overview of the requirements that R&D and, subsequently, patent applicants must meet. 

In May 2024 well over 100 delegates from the PCT member states have agreed on a treaty that is ready to be signed, which is intended to set uniform standards for patent applicants and, for the first time, also provides for sanctions for non-compliance. But what is the result?

As a matter of fact, the new proposals are not really groundbreaking. Much, such as the obligation to provide information, is already regulated in the Nagoya Protocol and has since been transposed into national law. Specific sanction provisions are new, but they have been formulated so carelessly that they leave practitioners with more questions than answers. On the other hand, the delegates have almost incidentally removed the Digital Sequence Information as a free source of reference outside the Nagoya Protocol.

The decisive disadvantage of the protocol, namely that it has not been ratified by important states such as the USA or Russia, is presumably being perpetuated here. This treaty also has no international effect, but only contains a request to the member states to incorporate the specific regulations into the PCT – so there is still a long way to go before it is transposed into national law, for which WIPO has no authority to issue instructions. First of all, the treaty needs to be signed by 15 member states in order to come into force.

The article by Bernd Fabry is available for free download on the homepage of IP2 Patentanwalts GmbH.

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