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As members of the World Trade Organization, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand had to give effect to the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) by enacting laws to protect plant breeders´ rights. They had a choice between the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) model law or device their own sui generis model within the parameters of TRIPS. The five countries are also parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA). TRIPS and UPOV are premised on private property rights while the CBD and ITPGRFA are grounded on the sovereign rights of nations, multilateral access and benefit sharing of plant genetic resources. The book examines to what extent the plant variety protection laws of the five countries balanced the disparate objectives of TRIPS, CBD and ITPGRFA. In the event, all five countries relied on the UPOV model but, each to a varying degree, made departures from that model to provide for farmers´ rights and conserve biological diversity.

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Rajeswari Kanniah, LL.B (Hons), LLM, PhD (University of Malaya), Advocate & Solicitor (High Court of Malaya). She has undertaken public interest litigation, served in national and international civil society organizations and as an academia. She is currently the Dean, Taylor´s Law School, Taylor´s University, Malaysia.

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