JEAIL > Volume 16(1); 2023 > Articles
Research Paper
Published online: May 30, 2023
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14330/jeail.2023.16.1.01

Compulsory Licensing or Disclosure Requirement? A Policy Instrument for Tackling Biopiracy in Southeast Asia

Jinyup Kim
Korea Intellectual Property Protection Agency
131, Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06133 Korea.
Corresponding Author: kjy3751@gmail.com

ⓒ Copyright YIJUN Institute of International Law
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/liceInha University Law School, 100 Inharo, Michuhol-gu, Incheon 22212 Korea. / nses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract
Biopiracy, largely defined as misappropriation and intellectual property control of biological resources and associated traditional knowledge, has long had profound adverse impacts on the lives of the people and communities in developing countries, including Southeast Asia, one of the global biodiversity hotspots. Given that patents are the main means used in most biopiracy cases to exploit resources and knowledge, this article will discuss its feasibility as the other policy instrument to tackle biopiracy in Southeast Asia and suggest how it should be established and/or improved. For this purpose, this article examines two policy instruments in the patent regime that can be and have been used to address the aforementioned problem: compulsory licensing and the disclosure requirement. Based on the analysis of these two instruments, this article discusses why compulsory licensing is an unlikely means of tackling the problem and suggests how a disclosure requirement can be established or improved to tackle biopiracy in the region.

Keywords : Biopiracy, Compulsory Licensing, Disclosure Requirement, Southeast Asia

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