Biopiracy
Encyclopedia
Biopiracy and bioprospecting
Biopiracy is a situation where indigenous knowledge of nature, originating with indigenous people, is exploited for commercial gain without permission from and with no compensation to the indigenous people themselves. Detractors of utilization of natural knowledge such as Greenpeace claim these practices contribute to inequality between developing countries rich in biodiversity
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
, and developed countries hosting companies which engage in 'biopiracy'.
The rosy periwinkle
The rosy periwinkle case dates from the 1950s. The rosy periwinkle, while native to MadagascarMadagascar
The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...
, had been widely introduced into other tropical countries around the world well before the discovery of vincristine
Vincristine
Vincristine , formally known as leurocristine, sometimes abbreviated "VCR", is a vinca alkaloid from the Catharanthus roseus , formerly Vinca rosea and hence its name. It is a mitotic inhibitor, and is used in cancer chemotherapy.-Mechanism:Tubulin is a structural protein that polymerizes to...
. This meant that researchers could obtain local knowledge from one country and plant samples from another. The locally known medical properties of the plant were not the same as the medical properties discovered and commercially used by Eli Lilly
Eli Lilly and Company
Eli Lilly and Company is a global pharmaceutical company. Eli Lilly's global headquarters is located in Indianapolis, Indiana, in the United States...
. The use of the plant as a cure for diabetes was the original stimulus for research, but cures for cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
were the most important results. Different countries are reported as having acquired different beliefs about the medical properties of the plant. The Hodgkin's Lymphoma
Hodgkin's lymphoma
Hodgkin's lymphoma, previously known as Hodgkin's disease, is a type of lymphoma, which is a cancer originating from white blood cells called lymphocytes...
chemotherapeutic drug vinblastine
Vinblastine
Vinblastine is an antimicrotubule drug used to treat certain kinds of cancer, including Hodgkin's lymphoma, non-small cell lung cancer, breast cancer, head and neck cancer, and testicular cancer. It is also used to treat Langerhan cell histiocytosis....
is also derivable from the rosy periwinkle.
The neem tree
Neem
Azadirachta indica is a tree in the mahogany family Meliaceae. It is one of two species in the genus Azadirachta, and is native to India growing in tropical and semi-tropical regions. Its fruits and seeds are the source of neem oil...
tree (Azadirachta indica), which grows throughout India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
; Indian villagers have long understood the tree's medicinal value. Although the patent had been granted on an extraction technique, the Indian press described it as a patent on the neem tree itself; the result was widespread public outcry, echoed throughout the developing world. Legal action by the Indian government followed, with the patent eventually being overturned in 2005.
Importantly, the pharmaceutical company involved in the neem case argued that as traditional Indian knowledge of the properties of the neem tree had never been published in an academic journal, such knowledge did not amount to "prior art
Prior art
Prior art , in most systems of patent law, constitutes all information that has been made available to the public in any form before a given date that might be relevant to a patent's claims of originality...
" (prior art is the term used when previously existing knowledge bars a patent). Public knowledge and public disclosure (including oral or written descriptions) is considered prior art in most countries.
The Enola Bean
The Enola bean is a variety of Mexican yellow bean, so called after the wife of the man who patented it in 1999.[9]. The allegedly distinguishing feature of the variety is seeds of a specific shade of yellow. The patent-holder subsequently sued a large number of importers of Mexican yellow beans with the following result: "...export sales immediately dropped over 90% among importers that had been selling these beans for years, causing economic damage to more than 22,000 farmers in northern Mexico who depended on sales of this bean."[10] A lawsuit was filed on behalf of the farmers, and on April 14, 2005 the USPTO ruled in favor of the farmers. An appeal was heard on 16 January 2008, and the patent was revoked in May 2008.[11] An appeal to the court against the revocation was unsuccessful (Decided October 2009).Basmati rice
In 2000, the US corporation RiceTec (a subsidiary of RiceTec AG of Liechtenstein) attempted to patent certain hybrids of basmati
Basmati
Basmati is a variety of long grain rice grown in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, notable for its fragrance and delicate, nuanced flavour. Its name means "the fragrant one" in Sanskrit, but it can also mean "the soft rice," and the word coincidentally means "my smile" in Arabic...
rice and semi-dwarf long-grain rice (see U.S. Patent No. 5,663,484). The Indian government intervened and several claims of the patent were invalidated. Meanwhile, the European Commission
European Commission
The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....
has agreed to protect basmati rice under its regulations
Protected designation of origin
Protected Geographical Status is a legal framework defined in European Union law to protect the names of regional foods. Protected Designation of Origin , Protected Geographical Indication and Traditional Speciality Guaranteed are distinct regimes of geographical indications within the framework...
pertaining to geographical indications.
Hoodia
HoodiaHoodia
Hoodia is a genus of 13 species in the flowering plant family Apocynaceae, under the subfamily Asclepiadoideae. They are stem succulents, described as "cactiform" because of their remarkable similarity to the unrelated cactus family...
, a succulent plant
Succulent plant
Succulent plants, also known as succulents or fat plants, are water-retaining plants adapted to arid climates or soil conditions. Succulent plants store water in their leaves, stems, and also in roots...
, originates from the Kalahari Desert
Kalahari Desert
The Kalahari Desert is a large semi-arid sandy savannah in Southern Africa extending , covering much of Botswana and parts of Namibia and South Africa, as semi-desert, with huge tracts of excellent grazing after good rains. The Kalahari supports more animals and plants than a true desert...
of South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
. For generations it has been known to the traditionally-living San
Bushmen
The indigenous people of Southern Africa, whose territory spans most areas of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola, are variously referred to as Bushmen, San, Sho, Barwa, Kung, or Khwe...
people as an appetite suppressant. In recent years (2004 onwards) there has been sensationalist media coverage of the plant. Derived products may be introduced into developed countries to help obesity
Obesity
Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and/or increased health problems...
. The long-term benefits are controversial.
Further cases
The following is a selection of some of the further cases in recent biopiracy studies. Most of them do not relate to traditional medicines.- A large selection of African biopiracy cases are discussed at GhanaWeb's Public Agenda (March 31, 2006)
- The case of the Maya people's pozolPozolPozol is a name for both the fermented corn dough and the drink made from it, which has its origins in Pre-Columbian Mexico. To the drink, other ingredients besides corn dough and water, such as cocoa, may be added...
drink is discussed in The New England Journal of International and Comparative Law and at Global Exchange - The case of the Maya and other people's use of Mimosa tenuifolia, including many other such cases in general are discussed at GRAIN
- The case of the Andean maca radish is discussed in the American University's Trade Environment Database
- The United Kingdom Select Committee on Environmental Audit 1999; Appendices to the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix 7: Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) and Farmers' Rights interestingly lists and describes the cases of turmericTurmericTurmeric is a rhizomatous herbaceous perennial plant of the ginger family, Zingiberaceae. It is native to tropical South Asia and needs temperatures between 20 °C and 30 °C and a considerable amount of annual rainfall to thrive...
(India), karela (India), quinoaQuinoaQuinoa , a species of goosefoot , is a grain-like crop grown primarily for its edible seeds. It is a pseudocereal rather than a true cereal, or grain, as it is not a member of the grass family...
(Bolivia), brazzeinBrazzeinBrazzein is a sweet-tasting protein extracted from the West African fruit of the climbing plant Oubli . It was first isolated as an enzyme by University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1994....
berries (Gabon), and others. - CaptoprilCaptoprilCaptopril is an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor used for the treatment of hypertension and some types of congestive heart failure. Captopril was the first ACE inhibitor developed and was considered a breakthrough both because of its novel mechanism of action and also because of the...
Patent law
One common misunderstanding is that pharmaceutical companies patentPatent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
the plants they collect. While obtaining a patent on a naturally occurring organism as previously known or used is not possible, patents may be taken out on specific chemicals isolated or developed from plants. Often these patents are obtained with a stated and researched use of those chemicals. Generally the existence, structure and synthesis of those compounds is not a part of the indigenous medical knowledge that led researchers to analyze the plant in the first place. As a result, even if the indigenous medical knowledge is taken as prior art, that knowledge does not by itself make the active chemical compound "obvious," which is the standard applied under patent law.
In the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, patent law can be used to protect "isolated and purified" compounds - even, in one instance, a new chemical element (see USP 3,156,523). In 1873, Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist born in Dole. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and preventions of diseases. His discoveries reduced mortality from puerperal fever, and he created the first vaccine for rabies and anthrax. His experiments...
patented a "yeast" which was "free from disease" (patent #141072). Patents covering biological inventions have been treated similarly. In the 1980 case of Diamond v. Chakrabarty
Diamond v. Chakrabarty
Diamond v. Chakrabarty, , was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with whether genetically modified organisms can be patented.-Background:...
, the Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
upheld a patent on a bacterium that had been genetically modified to consume petroleum, reasoning that U.S. law permits patents on "anything under the sun that is made by man." The United States Patent and Trademark Office
United States Patent and Trademark Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification.The USPTO is based in Alexandria, Virginia,...
(USPTO) has observed that "a patent on a gene covers the isolated and purified gene but does not cover the gene as it occurs in nature".
Also possible under US law is patenting a cultivar
Cultivar
A cultivar'Cultivar has two meanings as explained under Formal definition. When used in reference to a taxon, the word does not apply to an individual plant but to all those plants sharing the unique characteristics that define the cultivar. is a plant or group of plants selected for desirable...
, a new variety of an existing organism. The patent on the enola bean (now revoked) was an example of this sort of patent. The intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
laws of the US also recognize plant breeders' rights
Plant breeders' rights
Plant breeders' rights , also known as plant variety rights , are rights granted to the breeder of a new variety of plant that give him exclusive control over the propagating material and harvested material of a new variety for a number of years.With these rights, the breeder can choose...
under the Plant Variety Protection Act
Plant Variety Protection Act
The Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970 , 7 U.S.C. §§ 2321-2582, is an intellectual property statute in the United States. The PVPA gives breeders up to 25 years of exclusive control over new, distinct, uniform, and stable sexually reproduced or tuber propagated plant varieties...
, 7 U.S.C. §§ 2321-2582.
Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
The CBD came into force in 1993. It secured rights to control access to genetic resources for the countries in which those resources are located. One objective of the CBD is to enable lesser-developed countries to better benefit from their resources and traditional knowledge. Under the rules of the CBD, bioprospectors are required to obtain informed consentInformed consent
Informed consent is a phrase often used in law to indicate that the consent a person gives meets certain minimum standards. As a literal matter, in the absence of fraud, it is redundant. An informed consent can be said to have been given based upon a clear appreciation and understanding of the...
to access such resources, and must share any benefits with the biodiversity-rich country. However, some critics believe that the CBD has failed to establish appropriate regulations to prevent biopiracy. Others claim that the main problem is the failure of national governments to pass appropriate laws implementing the provisions of the CBD. The CBD has been ratified by all countries in the world except for Andorra
Andorra
Andorra , officially the Principality of Andorra , also called the Principality of the Valleys of Andorra, , is a small landlocked country in southwestern Europe, located in the eastern Pyrenees mountains and bordered by Spain and France. It is the sixth smallest nation in Europe having an area of...
, Holy See
Holy See
The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
and United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
The 1994 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights is an international agreement administered by the World Trade Organization that sets down minimum standards for many forms of intellectual property regulation as applied to nationals of other WTO Members...
(TRIPs)
and the 2001 International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture , popularly known as the International Seed Treaty, is a comprehensive international agreement in harmony with the Convention on Biological Diversity, which aims at guaranteeing food security through the conservation,...
are further relevant international agreements.
Bioprospecting contracts
The ethical debateEthics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
has sparked a new branch of international patent and trade law
International trade
International trade is the exchange of capital, goods, and services across international borders or territories. In most countries, such trade represents a significant share of gross domestic product...
. Bioprospecting contracts lay down the rules, between researchers and countries, of benefit sharing and can bring royalties to lesser-developed countries. However, the fairness of these contracts has been a subject of debate. Unethical bioprospecting contracts (as distinct from ethical ones) can be viewed as a new form of biopiracy.
An extensively discussed example of a bioprospecting contract is the agreement between Merck
Merck & Co.
Merck & Co., Inc. , also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme or MSD outside the United States and Canada, is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. The Merck headquarters is located in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, an unincorporated area in Readington Township...
and INBio of Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....
.
On June 14, 2011, Colombia approved a policy for the sustainable commercial use of its biodiversity resources, primarily through the development of biotechnology research. It includes plans to set up a national company for bioprospecting to link up with the commercial sector and will be backed with US$14 million in government funds over the next four years.
Ownership
The rights at issue in the biopiracy debates are primarily ownership rights. Who (if anyone) owns the Earth's biodiversityBiodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
? Under what circumstances is it appropriate to talk of 'ownership' of biodiversity, or of particular examples of it? Various and sometimes inconsistent regional and international laws and regulations assign ownership rights to many entities. Moreover, regardless of the legal situation, the case for any party having an ethical right to ownership of biological resources is a separate issue.
Ownership rights of national governments
Under current international law, national governments may exercise physical control over the biological resources within their country, just as they control mineral rights. However, it is less clear that governments have the right (or even the power) to control resources that have left the country legally. It is equally unclear how public knowledge relating to the application of biological resources is to be controlled.An advantage of national government ownership is that some national governments may be strong enough to defend property rights (e.g. against pharmaceutical corporations or other nations). Among objections to national government ownership is the fact that there may be conflicts of interest in developing countries between national governments and local communities. High biodiversity tends to occur in the least developed regions. National governments tend to represent the more developed and urbanised populations of a country. Ethnic, historical, and cultural gaps between governmentally well-represented groups and the populations of the least developed regions are not infrequent. The knowledge at issue in the biopiracy debates is often the knowledge of local communities, not the knowledge of their governments.
Ownership rights of local communities
Many groups argue that it is the local communities who possess the traditional biomedical knowledge who should benefit from the commercial use of such knowledge. Ownership rights should be attributed to these communities in order to safeguard their interests.One argument against this is that patent and copyright law are widely implemented as temporary legal mechanisms. Under most intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
laws, patents and copyrights expire. In many cases where local communities have been using traditional medicines for generations, these kinds of intellectual property rights would have expired. Many such indigenous groups maintain that their knowledge of the medicines should be protected on an international scale according to each group's internal intellectual property laws (see Indigenous intellectual property
Indigenous intellectual property
Indigenous intellectual property is an umbrella legal term used in national and international forums to identify indigenous peoples' special rights to claim all that their indigenous groups know now, have known, or will know....
).
All humankind as the owner of biodiversity, man
A more humanistic view of this debate is the claim that biodiversity is something that should be held in common by people in general. Under this view, any and all people who have a need for an advantage reaped by scientific exploration should be granted access to it. This view may be difficult to reconcile with intellectual propertyIntellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
law and with the Convention on Biological Diversity
Convention on Biological Diversity
The Convention on Biological Diversity , known informally as the Biodiversity Convention, is an international legally binding treaty...
.
Consequentialist arguments
Consequentialist arguments typically consider the maximisation of utilityUtility
In economics, utility is a measure of customer satisfaction, referring to the total satisfaction received by a consumer from consuming a good or service....
or other benefits.
In the case of the Rosy Periwinkle, the most noticeable consequence of the plant's widespread medicinal use is the numbers of cancer patients whose lives it saved. Most ownership rights entail the right to refuse certain uses, and a Consequentialist might conclude that the benefit of saving people's lives should outweigh and supersede property rights. In the case of the Enola bean, however, Consequentialist arguments favour the interests of Mexican bean farmers.
An alternative approach to the utilitarian Consequentialist argument assesses claims of biopiracy by examining the economic incentives underlying each step of the inventive transformation of genetic information into commercially valuable applications. In this reasoning, the benefit of awarding a temporary patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
as an incentive for parties that use this information to develop a medicine that can be widely distributed outweighs claims to compensation for alleged biopiracy, especially given the premise that most ethnobiological information already lies in the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
.
Virtue-based arguments
Many virtue-basedVirtue ethics
Virtue ethics describes the character of a moral agent as a driving force for ethical behavior, rather than rules , consequentialism , or social context .The difference between these four approaches to morality tends to lie more in the way moral dilemmas are...
arguments hold that there is something fundamentally and intuitively offensive or wrong about outsiders using traditional knowledge from indigenous communities to make a profit without compensating the communities in question. Virtue-based debates underlie many of this controversy's ethical issues. Many virtue-based approaches recognize the importance of human knowledge of biodiversity while encouraging some kind of exchange between bioprospectors and indigenous peoples.
Traditional knowledge database
In response to biopiracy threats faced in cases of turmeric, neem and basmati rice, Government of India has been translating and publishing ancient manuscripts containing old remedies in electronic form, and in 2001 the Traditional Knowledge Digital LibraryTraditional Knowledge Digital Library
Traditional Knowledge Digital Library is an Indian digital knowledge repository of the traditional knowledge, especially about medicinal plants and formulations used in Indian systems of medicine. Set up in 2001, as a collaboration between the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and...
was set up as repository of 1200 formulations of various systems of Indian medicine, such as Ayurveda
Ayurveda
Ayurveda or ayurvedic medicine is a system of traditional medicine native to India and a form of alternative medicine. In Sanskrit, words , meaning "longevity", and , meaning "knowledge" or "science". The earliest literature on Indian medical practice appeared during the Vedic period in India,...
, Unani
Unani
Unani-tibb or Unani Medicine also spelled Yunani Medicine means "Greek Medicine", and is a form of traditional medicine widely practiced in South Asia...
and Siddha
Siddha medicine
The Siddha medicine is one of the oldest medical systems known to mankind. This system of medicine originated from south Indian Tamil traditional medicine, as part of the trio Indian medicines - ayurveda, siddha and unani. This system was very popular in ancient India...
. The texts are being recorded from Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
, Urdu
Urdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
, Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
and Arabic; made available to patent offices in English, German, French, Japanese and Spanish. The aim is to protect India's heritage from being exploited by foreign companies. Hundreds of Yoga
Yoga
Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India. The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on Supersoul...
poses are also kept in the collection. The project has been criticized by a spokesman for the pharmaceutical industry as "a solution in search of a problem". The library has also signed agreements with leading international patent office
Patent office
A patent office is a governmental or intergovernmental organization which controls the issue of patents. In other words, "patent offices are government bodies that may grant a patent or reject the patent application based on whether or not the application fulfils the requirements for...
s such as European Patent Office
European Patent Office
The European Patent Office is one of the two organs of the European Patent Organisation , the other being the Administrative Council. The EPO acts as executive body for the Organisation while the Administrative Council acts as its supervisory body as well as, to a limited extent, its legislative...
(EPO), United Kingdom Trademark & Patent Office
United Kingdom Patent Office
The Intellectual Property Office of the United Kingdom is, since 2 April 2007, the operating name of The Patent Office. It is the official government body responsible for intellectual property rights in the UK and is an executive agency of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills...
(UKPTO) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office
United States Patent and Trademark Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification.The USPTO is based in Alexandria, Virginia,...
to protect traditional knowledge
Traditional knowledge
Traditional knowledge , indigenous knowledge , traditional environmental knowledge and local knowledge generally refer to the long-standing traditions and practices of certain regional, indigenous, or local communities. Traditional knowledge also encompasses the wisdom, knowledge, and teachings...
from biopiracy as it allows patent examiners at International Patent Offices to access TKDL databases for patent search and examinations purposes.
See also
- Intellectual capitalIntellectual capitalThe value of an enterprise is made of physical assets, various financial assets and, finally, intangible assets, i.e., intellectual capital . The term intellectual capital conventionally refers to the difference in value between tangible assets and market value. ....
- List of environment topics
- Natural capitalNatural capitalNatural capital is the extension of the economic notion of capital to goods and services relating to the natural environment. Natural capital is thus the stock of natural ecosystems that yields a flow of valuable ecosystem goods or services into the future...
- Biological patentBiological patentA biological patent is a patent relating to an invention or discovery in biology. It can be a composition of matter, a method for obtaining or using one or more thereof, or a product combining such things...
- Traditional knowledgeTraditional knowledgeTraditional knowledge , indigenous knowledge , traditional environmental knowledge and local knowledge generally refer to the long-standing traditions and practices of certain regional, indigenous, or local communities. Traditional knowledge also encompasses the wisdom, knowledge, and teachings...
- PiracyPiracyPiracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea. The term can include acts committed on land, in the air, or in other major bodies of water or on a shore. It does not normally include crimes committed against persons traveling on the same vessel as the perpetrator...
- Intellectual propertyIntellectual propertyIntellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
- Plant breeders' rightsPlant breeders' rightsPlant breeders' rights , also known as plant variety rights , are rights granted to the breeder of a new variety of plant that give him exclusive control over the propagating material and harvested material of a new variety for a number of years.With these rights, the breeder can choose...
- BioethicsBioethicsBioethics is the study of controversial ethics brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, and philosophy....
External links
- Out of Africa: Mysteries of Access and Benefit-Sharing - a 2006 report on biopiracy in Africa by The Edmonds Institute
- Cape Town Declaration - Biowatch South Africa
- Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN)
- Third World Network (TWN)
- Indian scientist denies accusation of biopiracy - SciDev.Net
- African 'biopiracy' debate heats up - SciDev.Net
- Bioprospecting: legitimate research or 'biopiracy'? - SciDev.Net
- ETC Group papers on Biopiracy : Topics include: Monsanto’s species-wide patent on all genetically modified soybeans (EP0301749); Synthetic Biology Patents (artificial, unique life forms); Terminator Seed Technology; etc...
- Coalition Against Biopiracy: Captain Hook Awards and Cog Awards http://www.captainhookawards.org/
- Richard Stallman on Biopiracy
- Biopirates in the Americas - By Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero, AlterNetAlterNetAlterNet, a project of the non-profit Independent Media Institute, is a progressive/liberal activist news service. Launched in 1998, AlterNet now claims a readership of over 3 million visitors per month .AlterNet publishes original content as well as journalism from a wide variety of other sources...
(June 3, 2003). - The US Patent System Legalizes Theft and Biopiracy - By Vandana Shiva.
- Who Owns Biodiversity, and How Should the Owners Be Compensated?, Plant Physiology, April 2004, Vol. 134, pp. 1295–1307
- Review article on bioprospecting from The Science Creative Quarterly
- Heald, Paul J. (2001), "'Your Friend in the Rain Forest': An Essay on the Rhetoric of Biopiracy" . Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=285177 or DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.285177
- Traditional Ecological Knowledge Prior Art Database
- An extensive master thesis on biopiracy by Johan Ragnar, Sweden