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Preempting PiracyAuthor(s): Jaideep SinghSource: Foreign Policy, No. 144 (Sep. - Oct., 2004), p. 93Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLCStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4152997 .

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Preempting Piracy

F irst, it was raiding ships on the high seas. Then, with the advent of the information age, it was copying

and downloading films and music. Today, the new fron- tier of piracy is "biopiracy," when companies in wealthy nations patent indigenous medical and cosmetic remedies

that have been used for centuries in poor coun- tries. In 1999, for instance, New Jersey- based Pure World Botan- icals obtained U.S. patents on aphrodisiacs derived from maca, an Andean plant Peruvians have long used to bolster fertility. The value of the U.S. mar- ket for maca-derived products was estimated to be more than $20 mil- lion in 2003.

Hoping to prevent wealthy corporations from staking claim to traditional remedies, some nongovernmental orga- nizations and even a few governments are cataloging indige- nous medicines and plant species in online databases. The American Association for the Advancement of Science maintains a database at shr.aaas.org/tek that is open to tra- ditional knowledge holders who want to preempt patent- ing by others. Links to similar databases can be found on the Web site of the World Intellectual Property Organiza- tion (www.wipo.int/tk/en).

Some intellectual property experts, however, doubt that databases can prevent biopiracy. When Pat Mooney, executive director of the anti-biopiracy Erosion Technolo- gy and Concentration Group, suspects an agricultural patent is pirated, he turns to a database of over 500,000 seeds run by the Consultative Group on International Agri- cultural Research (www.singer.cgiar.org), a multinational organization funded by governments. The database entries, he finds, are rarely detailed enough to prevent patents. Patent offices-primarily in the United States, but also in Canada and Europe-appear either unwilling or unable to conduct deeper investigations. Mooney found 146 existing patents on plant varieties already documented.

Some experts even fear that databases of traditional plants and organisms may offer a good starting point for potential biopirates. "Companies spend billions look- ing for traditional knowledge," argues Devinder Sharma, chair of the New Delhi-based Forum for Biotechnology & Food Security, a collective of scientists, farmers, and

environmentalists. "With these databases we are simply handing it over to them." Sharma says that instead of relying on databases of traditional knowledge, develop- ing countries should follow the example of China's gov- ernment, which has secured around 12,000 patents on its own traditional medicines. -Jaideep Singh

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Jennifer L. Rich is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C. Soyoung Ho is editorial assistant at the Washington Monthly. Jaideep

Singh is editorial assistant at FOREIGN POLICY.

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