Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) was previ-ously the subject of national legislation and policy. This issue was brought into international trade through the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in the Final Act of the Uruguay Round.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was previously the body in charge of administering intellectual property conventions, which have now been superceded by the 1995 Agreement between the World Intellectual Property Organization and the World Trade Organization. Under WIPO, intellectual property areas included copyright and related rights, trademarks, geographical indications, industrial designs, patents, layout designs of integrated circuits, trade secrets.

However, the TRIPS Agreement of the Uruguay Round (Article 27) allows the patenting of any invention "whether products or processes, in all fields of technology without discrimination, subject to the normal tests of novelty, inventiveness and industrial applicability". This includes micro-organisms, as well as "non-biological and microbiological processes...for the production of plants and animals". The TRIPS Agreement thus allows the patenting of biological organisms, including parts of animals and plants, altered plants and animals, as well as genes and cell-lines. The onus is on countries to protect their "plant varieties either by patents or by an effective sui generis system or by any combination thereof".

The full impact of the TRIPS Agreement will mean that Third World women farmers will stop being the custodians and owners of seed. Even the sui generis option is pushing governments to give monopoly rights to the seed industry through introducing breeders’ rights legislation. The International Convention of the Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) had maintained farmers’ rights to save seed, but in a March 1991 amendment this clause was removed. The new clause in UPOV (and TRIPS) can be used to enforce royalty payments on farmers if they save seeds of their own crop. With the stronger intellectual property rights regime being conceived under WTO, the transfer of extra funds as royalty payments from the poor to the rich countries would exacerbate the current Third World debt crisis.

Intellectual Property Rights in the area of seeds and plant material are, in any case, not easy to demarcate, since the genetic resources used by trans-national corporations for claiming patents are the product of centuries of innovation and selection by Third World farmers, especially women. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has recognised these contributions in the form of "Farmers Rights." The Biodiversity Convention signed at the 1992 Earth Summit also recognises them and accepts the need to make intellectual property rights subservient to the objectives of biodiversity conservation. The TRIPS Agreement, however, biased as it is in favour of acknowledging only innovations by trans-national corporations goes against these agreements reached on other international platforms. These contradictions between trade and environment are currently being debated within the WTO itself.

Article 34 of the TRIPS Agreement prioritises the right of the patent-holder over others, including Third World farmers applying their indigenous knowledge. Trans-national corporations are now taking out broad patents on plant varieties, covering ownership of traits and characteristics. It has become legally possible for a corporation to accuse the farmers who originally contributed the seeds with a particular trait, of patent infringement. Under Article 34, "the judicial authorities shall have the authority to order the defendant to prove that the process to obtain an identical product is different from the patented process". 1 There is no clause in TRIPS to protect farmers in such cases.

The Margosa plant, also known as the Neem tree (botanical name: Azadirachta indica), is an example of a Third World plant that has been patented. Over 30 patents have already been granted for 23 varieties of this plant. According to the Neem Foundation, "The tremendous international interest in Neem can be gauged by the number of patents filed on the various properties, active principles and their extraction and stabilising processes in US and Japan. This seems to have whipped a north–south confrontation. The issue at the core of the worldwide debate appears to be who controls genetic resources traditional cultures or transnational corporations?"

WTO norms are supposed to protect the intellectual property rights of rich and poor countries alike over industrial and agricultural resources. However, scientists in developing countries have pointed out that the first consequences will be suffered by the scientific exchange networks in their countries. Few developing countries have legislation to protect intellectual property rights on agro-biodiversity. Intellectual property rights on agro-biodiversity could lead to a point when farmers will have to sign contracts and commitments on the use they will give the seed received from the suppliers. Arnaldo Chivaro of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) said that while the rich countries are currently interested in establishing rights over industrial property, the developing world should put the stress on protecting genetic resources. He also warned "the countries with greater resources to detect violations of intellectual property" have an advantage compared with other WTO member states.

TRIPS is thus a new trade challenge to people’s access, control and even knowledge of their own livelihood resources. A minimum standard for TRIPS that has already been agreed upon, grants a period of 20 years as the "life of a patent". Twenty years also constitute the life of one generation of people. TRIPS favours developed countries with resources to lodge patents and pay royalties. The "haves" and "have-nots" are becoming the "knows" and the "know-nots". TRIPS will tend to direct the flow of income in the direction of knowledge-owning and technology-exporting countries. To address this situation, resources must be directed to empower communities and women to safeguard their knowledge and to hold intellectual property rights over their own knowledge. To some extent, this has happened: India's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has successfully challenged the University of Mississippi Medical Center's application to patent turmeric.