Question

What is Biopiracy? State the initiative taken by the Indian Parliament towards it.

Answer 1

Hint: The right granted by the government to an inventor to prevent others from the commercial use of his invention is known as biopatent. It can be granted for an invention, an improvement in earlier invention, or the process of generating a product.

Complete answer:
The biological resources or bio resources of many nations are patented or/ and exploited by many organizations and multinational companies without proper authorizations from the countries concerned, this is known as bio piracy.
The organisms that can be used to derive commercial benefits are included in biological resources or bio resources.
Traditional knowledge related to bio resources is the knowledge developed by various communities over a long period of history, regarding the utilizations of the bio resources, for example, use of herbs, etc. as drugs. Many modern commercial processes are developed using this traditional knowledge.
Institutions and companies of industrialized nations are collecting and exploiting the bioresources in the following ways:
They are collecting and patenting the genetic resources themselves.
The bioresources are being analyzed for the identification of valuable biomolecules. These biomolecules are then patented and used for commercial activities.
Useful genes are isolated from the bioresources and patented. Commercial products are generated using these genes.
The traditional knowledge related to bioresources is utilized to achieve the objective.
The initiative taken by the Indian Parliament towards it is that it recently cleared the second amendment of the Indian Patent Bill. It takes into consideration the issues related to it like patent terms, emergency provisions and research and development issues.

Note:
Many developing nations have realized the injustice, inadequate compensation and benefit sharing between them and developing nations and thus they have developed laws to prevent such exploitation of their bioresources.