Transnational Corporations have been lobbying for a global legal system through which they can claim monopoly control of certain interesting biological resources such as tissues, cells, genes, micro-organisms etc. They are doing this through the World Trade Organisation in which there are certain agreements developed which create conditions for these corporations to operate with minimum restrictions. The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement is the one which would mean any living organism or part there of could be claimed as a private monopoly.

The African WTO negotiators have taken a joint stand questioning the logic, morality and efficacy of this idea. They submitted this position during the TRIPs Review in 1999, but the WTO has chosen to ignore it and thus the review of this agreement is still open.