Native Groups Win Major Victory in Biopiracy War

by Danielle Knight

Activists and their lawyers are pushing for reforms to the U.S. Patent laws so that such patents cannot be issued incorrectly in the future.

The plant in immediate question -- known as Ayahuasca or Yage is "sacred" to thousands of Native people in the Amazon region of South America who used it in traditional religious and healing ceremonies.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office earlier this month canceled the patent on the plant which had been issued to a U.S. citizen in 1986.

Authorities said they took action because publications describing the plant were "known and available" prior to the filing of the patent application. "No patentable distinctions are seen between the referenced plants and the (plant originally patented)," said the statement by the Patent office.

Loren Miller, director of International Plant Medicine Corporation, a small California-based company, received a patent on Ayahuasca claiming that he had altered the plant with the permission from of an unidentified Native person.

Although no commercial product was developed from the plant, Miller said he was experimenting with the hallucinogenic properties of the plant to see if it could be made into medicine.

Protesting the threat to the plant, nearly 100 Native leaders from Brazil, Ecuador, Suriname, Bolivia, Guyana, French Guyana, Venezuela, Peru and Colombia, denounced Miller's patent when it came to light in 1996.

News of the patent's cancellation was hailed as an "historic victory" for Native groups worldwide.

"Our Shamans and Elders were greatly troubled by this patent," said Antonia Jacanamijoy, general coordinator of the Coordinating Body for the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA).

While praising the cancellation of the patent, U.S. lawyers who filed the challenge to the patent on behalf of indigenous groups remained worried that the Patent office had not adequately changed the policy that allowed Miller to patent Ayahuasca in the first place.

"The Patent and Trademark Office needs to change its rules to prevent future patent claims based on the traditional knowledge and use of a plant by indigenous peoples," said David Downes, the attorney who filed the challenge to the patent.

Downes, who works with the Washington-based Centre for International Environmental Law, urged the Patent office to question whether it was ethical for patent applicants to claim private rights over a plant or knowledge that was sacred to a cultural or ethnic group.

U.S. plant patents originally were meant to reward fruit growers with the exclusive right over the use and sale of the techniques used to produce new varieties of apples or other crops.

But Downes said that the Patent office did not require adequate researching of the plant described in the plant patent to insure that, before issuing the patent, the specimen indeed was novel.

Because of these policy flaws, U.S. Patent officials issued a patent on another widely used plant, turmeric, the popular spice from India. Although canceled in 1997, the patent had been granted to U.S. researchers who wanted to develop medicine from the spice based on the traditional knowledge of people in India.

William Anderson, director of the University of Michigan Herbarium, who helped Downes challenge the patent, agreed that the Patent Office needed to improve its procedures for researching applications.

Together with Native leaders and the Amazon Coalition, Downes said the Patent Office should require that patent claims identify all biological resources and traditional knowledge that they used in developing the claimed invention.

To further avoid wrongly-issued patents, applicants should also disclose the geographical origin, and provide evidence that the source country and Native community consented to its use, said Downes.