Researchers say new law needed

Researchers say new law needed

BANDUNG: Researchers from the Intellectual Property Agency at
the Institution of Technology in Bandung called on the government
to draft a law that would protect the country's natural resources
and locally crafted technologies from being patented by foreign
nation's.

The agency's managing director, Herlianti Hilman, pointed out
that there were already several cases in which organisms taken
from Indonesia gratis were registered by foreign companies.

One example, she claimed, was a locally distinct microorganism
which has been patented by scientists from U.S.-based Stanford
University and which is currently earning then some US$20 million
per year from revenues.

She argued that if Indonesia protects and patents of all its
microorganisms, which are used for various medicines, the
royalties gained from them could be used to recover the country's
debts.

Herlianti said that only a few domestic researchers were aware
of this matter.

She added that 96 percent of intellectual properties patented
in Indonesia were owned by foreign researchers. (25/01)