“Drafting Successful Access and Benefit-sharing Contracts” builds on the fact that the international negotiations in Access and Benefit Sharing are (at least mostly) over, so now the time has come to accept that the Nagoya Protocol and the binding obligation in the Convention on Biological Diversity are what we have got, and move forward and find the best ways to use them effectively. The time is now to create and use practical tools that will work to develop and implement a functional abs system at every level. The abs Contract is one of those tools. abs Contracts are, at base, contracts bound by contract law. There may not be much formal “abs law” that deals with abs contracts as yet, but the principles of contract law are very detailed and well established in every country. Most ABS contracts are “international contracts” (contracts in which at least one key element is found in more than one country). After hundreds of years of legal development in addressing international contracts, there is still no uniform global contract law. As a new area of contract law comes into being, it is common for special rules and practice within that area to develop on a contract-by-contract basis.