This is a fascinating story of intellectual property rights (IPR) involving one of the greatest national parks in the world, a tiny bacterium found in its fetid bubbling springs and the millions of dollars it has helped to generate for a pharmaceutical giant in another continent. Tied to this saga of discovery and development that began over 40 years ago in the boiling mud pots of Yellowstone National Park in the US is a bitter debate about the ownership of natural resources that will once again be in the spotlight when the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) opens in Bonn next week. The star in this story is Thermus Aquaticus