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)