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For the past several
decades, Western corporations have complained that piracy in developing
countries of their intellectual property has cost them billions of dollars in
profits. Microsoft is up in arms about pirated software in India and China,
while the movie industry is livid over the piracy of its DVDs. You have no
doubt heard the incessant industry refrains and occasionally perhaps even
sympathized with the corporations.
What you likely haven’t
heard of is the even larger and more pernicious piracy of traditional knowledge
by some of the largest agricultural and chemical giants in the United States
and Europe. Not only do these companies exploit impoverished tribes in some of
the poorest regions of the world, in many instances they have patented their
knowledge, giving the biopirates the exclusive rights to its commercialization.
In a handful of instances
the crass abuse of the global patent system has ignited public fury and
resulted in the reversal of the patents. The European Patent Office, for
instance, revoked a patent issued to the American chemical conglomerate W R
Grace for a neem insecticide after global protests and challenges by several
NGOs. Patents for turmeric, Hoodia cactus, a Mexican yellow bean variant as
well as a dozen other commonly known medicinal formulations or plant variants
have been successfully challenged during the past decade.
But in this same period,
tens of thousands of other patents have been issued by the U.S. and European
patent offices. In fact, even though W R Grace’s neem patent was revoked,
nearly 100 other neem patents derived from the commonly known and used
properties of the tree by Indians over generations still remain on the books.
India’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library estimates that nearly 2,000
patent applications copied from traditional Indian medicinal formulations are
submitted every year, or 20,000 in the past decade. A 1998 study of patents in
Australia by the nonprofit ETC Group found that 10% of all plant patents were
biopirated.
Greed is the primary impetus
for biopiracy as new medicines can cost hundreds of millions of dollars and
take years to develop. Traditional medicinal formulations, by contrast, are
already time tested and often available off the shelf, offering billions of
dollars in risk-free rewards.
A patent is supposed to only
be granted to a product or process that is novel or involves an inventive step.
That is scarcely the case with biopirated patents as traditional medicinal
systems — such as Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha in India, or Chinese or Amazonian
traditional practices — have employed the products and techniques for
centuries. Companies and university researchers circumvent the requirement
because the “prior art” — the term by which previous knowledge on the subject
is defined — is unknown to patent examiners since it only exists in oral
traditions or unfamiliar texts. U.S. patent law requires applicants to disclose
their awareness of related references to their claim and failure to do so can
result in the invalidation of a patent. But biopirates observe the requirement
in the breach.
The existing patent regime
skewed in favor of Western companies has been preserved largely on the strength
of American economic and political muscle. As the economic clout of Brazil,
India and China rises, they will hopefully begin challenging the deception and
hypocrisy that allows Western companies to exploit the poorest and most
vulnerable communities on this planet.
Meanwhile, the next time you
hear music or movie studios whine about the hazards of pirated downloads by
struggling college students, give them a lesson on the theft of medicinal
products and seeds from Asia, Africa and Latin America by their corporate
buddies, will you?.
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