Compulsory licences can also be conferred under Article 31 of the TRIPs Agreement in cases where the patent-holder refuses a third party's request for a voluntary licence, whenever such a request is made based on reasonable commercial terms. As mentioned above, the Agreement does not limit the grounds on which a compulsory licence may be granted and applied, with the exception of the case of semiconductor technology. This provision would apply, in principle, to any kind of compulsory licence. Thus, the circumstances of the licensee and of the country where it operates, as well as the purpose of the licence, should be taken into consideration when establishing the remuneration due. A licence conferred in order to satisfy public health or other social needs may be subject to parameters different from those applicable when purely commercial and industrial interests are involved.
Microbiological processes are industrial processes that employ micro-organisms.
The distinction is important and is based on the taxonomy of living organisms according to the frequency of genes, chromosal arrangements and hereditary characteristics. There are, for instance, many different varieties of the species wheat. In accordance with Article 6, nothing in the TRIPs Agreement shall be used to address the issue of exhaustion for the purposes of dispute settlement, in other words, a panel cannot be set up in order to judge such issues. 21 See, for instance, alternative B, Article 19, of the WIPO draft Treaty Supplementing the Paris Convention as far as patents are concerned, presented to The Hague Diplomatic Conference in June 1991. Thus, the US Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act permits the carrying out of tests to establish the bio-equivalency of generic products before the expiration of the relevant patent.