KOCHI, May 13; People's commission on biodiversity, indigenous knowledge and people's rights has been launched in Kochi. Headed by Justice Krishna Iyer, the commission will collect evidence and hold public hearings on `biopiracy' and intellectual property rights as a prelude to introducing an Intellectual Property Bill as a private Bill to protect patent rights and prevent biopiracy.

The commission has a broad perspective based on The enclosure and recovery of biological and intellectual commons: Biodiversity, indigenous knowledge and intellectual property rights,' presented to it by the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.

The conclusions of the commission, however, will be independent, based on evidence, data collection and other inquiries conducted by it.

The issues to be examined by the commission include patents on life forms, naturally occurring substances, on genes, components and parts of living organisms, their characteristics and their products; the patents on traditional knowledge of communities, like farmers communities, tribal communities, and traditional healer communities. The ethical questions on patenting of life forms, and the recognition of information innovations by the farmers as equal to scientific inventions by breeders in laboratories are other issues that will be looked into.

The exclusive rights for seeds and plant materials to multinational companies will also be taken up.

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