생명물질이전계약에 관한 법적고찰

Legal Aspects of Biological Material Transfer Agreement

Although Parties, directly involved, had made contracts for a technology transfer or a patent license for the purpose of research and development in the past, the new form of contract, a material transfer agreement, emerged in the late 20th century. Especially, as a biotechnology was developed and patent for life was allowed, the biological material transfer agreement became increased rapidly. The biological material transfer agreement could be made variously depending on the form of transfer, sort of material, parties, directly involved, and whether they could be paid or not. Securing a right to material is a key point for providers and gaining a right to product of work is main point for receivers. So the material transfer agreement should correctly reflect the intention of providers who have expertise on materials and balance the claims and obligations of providers and receivers. Also it should deal with problems of intellectual property rights to materials and products of work. Uniform Biological Material Transfer Agreement(UBMTA) of National Institutes of Health(NIH) is used as a global standard. But UBMTA only regulates relationships between public organizations and non-profit organizations, so the study should be done to prepare a standard which rules relationships between profit-making organizations, public organizations and profit-making organizations, and public organizations and non-profit organizations. Also the material transfer agreement, made according to the unique characteristics of materials, should be developed by grasping characteristics of each material. Furthermore, Access and Benefit Sharing(ABS) agreement could be mixed up with the material transfer agreement because it also deals with life like genetic resources and it uses a name of the material transfer agreement. So, the study which compares and analyzes the material transfer agreement and ABS agreement should be done.