By John Dawes

An international benefit-sharing agreement involving food plants might act as a blueprint for a similar one for ornamental fish. Photo credit: Cioli & Hunnicutt/Bowtie Studios

For example, if countries or companies that breed and sell discus, guppies, platies, swordtails, bettas, etc., were to agree to pay a license, fee or royalty to the countries of origin of these fish, what happens then? Who would receive the royalties? Who would pay them? How could such payments be justified? How high or low should these royalty/license payments be? When should they be payable? Who would administer the collection and transfer of such payments?

A recent announcement regarding food crops could prove to be the blueprint for such an agreement concerning ornamental fish. A report recently published on the Intellectual Property Watch website, discusses a benefit-sharing scheme that is due to come into operation between providers (countries of origin) and recipients (those who import or obtain stocks/products and develop them).

The scheme arises from the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) adopted in November 2001 and implemented in June 2004. The process of implementation can often be long and tortuous and, as in this particular case, involved the complex matter of establishing a benefit-sharing fund into which payments can be made by recipients and out of which payments to providers could be made.

Under the agreement, recipients (in the case of our industry, countries that develop new varieties of fish and plants and commercialize them) can opt for one of two methods of contributing to the benefit-sharing scheme:

• In the case where the recipient commercializes a product (e.g., a new variety of ornamental fish) but does not make the product “available without restriction to others for further research and breeding, the recipient shall pay a fixed percentage of the sales…into the mechanism established by the governing body for this purpose….” (i.e., benefit sharing).
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• In the case where the recipient commercializes a product and makes it “available without restriction to others for further research and breeding, the recipient is encouraged to make voluntary payments into the mechanism established by the governing body for this purpose….”

Could the FAO International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture provide a launch pad for the discussions that our industry will have to undertake but hasn’t ever begun considering yet? <HOME>