Healing Broken Patent Laws

Many medicines and herbs that grow in remote places haven't been "discovered" yet by the wider world and aren't known by people at large. But these herbs and medicines may be widely used by local indigenous peoples.

If a big pharmaceutical company learns of a particular herb—used by an indigenous tribe—which may be turned into a groundbreaking treatment for a serious illness, the company will waste no time to patent that knowledge as its own to make a profit of it. It won't give any credit to the indigenous community where its used originated.

In other words, the company has learned something it wants to keep secret. Putting a patent on that knowledge will ensure it remains a secret. It will also stop rival pharmaceutical companies from learning the secret and using it to create competing products. This way the company has the sole right to make this groundbreaking medicine and can charge more money for it (because there aren't any similar products on the market).

But while the pharmaceutical company is making money off this new drug based on indigenous knowledge, the tribe doesn't receive any compensation.

This pharmaceutical company effectively robbed the local community of its knowledge and resources. This is called "biopiracy."

"Biopiracy" is when interests in industrial countries exploit biodiversity in poor countries to develop agricultural products, healthcare products, and so forth, without properly compensating the "traditional communities" that first discovered their usefulness.

"Poor people are ‘shorted' by companies that register patents based on their knowledge and collect revenues that should go to the poorer communities," says Philip Schuler, co-editor of the World Bank's recent publication "Poor People's Knowledge: Promoting Intellectual Property in Developing Countries."

"The challenge facing developing countries is to unpackage knowledge from indigenous products and repackage it for commercial markets," he says.

One reason behind this is the way patent laws work.

Patent laws protect the individual (a company can be considered as an individual person for legal reasons) and their invention, in other words, their secret. But these laws aren't set up to protect communal knowledge an entire tribe might know. According to the logic of western law, if many people know something, then it's not a secret and can't be protected.

But indigenous peoples think and live in a society that's very different to this type of thinking.

Existing international intellectual property laws focus on protecting intellectual property knowledge produced in developed countries and regulating their international use.

But the international community is beginning to realize this is not fair. Thought is now being given to how to improve the existing laws and ensure indigenous or folkloric knowledge is protected and compensated for what it is.

This is becoming more and more important now that inventions and creations are becoming valuable products to trade.

According to "Poor People's Knowledge: Promoting Intellectual Property in Developing Countries," poor people could profit from their knowledge and folklore if they can use modern methods to protect and market it.

^ top