Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURTs) have attracted intense international debate, as many public interest groups and developing country governments have concerns about the role of technology in locking up the benefits and undermining concerns over biodiversity, biosafety, intellectual...

Bio and information communication technologies have created a new global economy and have helped in re-shaping the competitive profile of many developing countries in the new knowledge economy. In Nigeria, because of the abundance of creative cultural energy and investments in capacity building...

This article examines the international legal framework in which traditional farmers and agricultural biotechnology (agro-biotech) protect their knowledge and plant genetic resources. Traditional farms and agro-biotech both play significant roles in enhancing global food security and...

According to regime theory, inequities in the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement has provided a catalyst for counter-regime dynamics against TRIPS and the greater international intellectual property system (IIPS). The post-TRIPS regime analyses of the IIPS...

The pharmaceutical industry has greatly benefitted from using intellectual property law to optimize investment in pharmaceutical research and development. Graham Dutfield's book explores how that came to be, and what the future may hold for the continued co-evolution of life sciences, business...

Discourses of local knowledge and categories of rights claimants thereto are embroiled in complex conceptual and analytical morass. The conceptual quandary around local knowledge is diversionary from the historically rooted hierarchies of culture, power and politics that have subjugated it....

This report explores the extent to which indigenous knowledge have been advanced by the 1992 Rio Earth Summit up to Rio 20 in the evolution of coastal, ocean and marine environmental law. Parties to the Rio Earth Summit have failed to follow through on their commitments, but the state of the...

This Article critically examines the inadequacy of theoretical postulates on intellectual property. It acknowledges that theorizing around intellectual property is an important ongoing but elusive intellectual adventure that is critical for law and policy direction on intellectual property....

In 2000, African countries expressed reservation over the adoption of UPOV Act of 1991 as a model of plant breeders’ rights (PBRs) for TRIPS- compliance. For the continent, an acceptable system of PBRs protection would include the protection of the “rights of communities and their indigenous...

In accordance with global trend, Nigeria and the rest of Africa are gradually embracing genetically modified organisms. As well, Nigeria is coming to terms with the reality and ubiquity of applications of agro-biotechnology, including its prospects both for economic advancement and for diverse...