The WIPO Genetic Resources and TK Treaty: Disrupting the Power Imbalance in International Intellectual Property
Working Paper, Publication Forthcoming
(August 2026)
By Chidi Oguamanam
The 2024 WIPO Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge (GRATK) is a major milestone in interfacing traditional knowledge with intellectual property. It is the first major Development Agenda-inspired treaty, marking a symbolic shift in the historic trajectory of intellectual property treaty-making, hitherto dominated by the world's industrialized countries.
This article situates the GRATK Treaty within the chequered regime complex in which traditional knowledge has been buffeted by the globalization of Eurocentric intellectual property. It spotlights the iconoclastic nature of traditional knowledge in disrupting the conventional agenda-setting power blocs driving international intellectual property. It also highlights critical dynamics, including wild cards - unforeseen and circumstantial events - leadership, diplomatic horse-trading, and issue linkage that collectively contributed to making the Treaty happen against the odds. It concludes that modern intellectual property treaty-making may no longer, as a necessity, reflect simplistic binary alignment of interests. What appears to be the currency of the new order, as represented by the Treaty, is a combination of contingency, diplomatic sagacity, deftness in identifying issue-linkages, and pragmatism in respect of horse-trading or issue linkage bargaining in diplomacy.
World Intellectual Property Organization Headquarters in Geneva