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To some degree, the distinction between the CHPD and the CHDD correlates with a distinction made by Baslar between the CH as applied to lands and resources found in extranational spaces (places beyond national boundaries, such as the deep sea or the moon) and the CH as applied to lands and resources found within the boundaries of sovereign states. See Baslar, , supra note 20, at 110–111, chap. 8.Google Scholar

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A problem with the one-country-one-vote model is that it provides a mechanism for ratifying the interests of national governments, but it does not necessarily provide a mechanism for identifying or responding to the interests of minority groups within nation states. In designing a governance structure, one ought not to expect that national governments are equally effective at representing the interests of all people within their jurisdictions. Furthermore, some indigenous communities have a sovereign or quasi-sovereign status within larger nation-states, and it is not clear that governments of nation-states can or ought to represent these indigenous communities. How would American Indian tribes be represented in the governance of a CH property?.Google Scholar

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This approach would be similar to the march-in right currently granted under U.S. law to federal agencies that fund research resulting in patented inventions. “March-in rights,” United States Code, Title 35, Chapter 18, section 203 (2007). No federal agency has ever exercised the march-in right.Google Scholar

This approach bears some relation to proposals that biobanks should act as trustees for individuals whose samples and information are included in the bank. See Winickoff, D. E. and Winickoff, R. N., “The Charitable Trust as a Model for Genomic Biobanks,” New England Journal of Medicine 349, no. 12 (2003): 1180–1184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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Note, however, that patents do not necessarily create true economic monopolies. If products not covered by the patent can compete in the same market as the patented item, and the patentee cannot control pricing in that market, then the patent has not conferred a true monopoly. Numerous patented drugs, such as cholesterol lowering statins, have sold in markets in which several different patented drugs, or various patented and unpatented drugs, competed.Google Scholar

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