Amazon Indigenous Win Patent Dispute Over Ayahuasca
11/4/99
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Title: Amazon Indigenous Win Patent Dispute
Source: Weekly News Update of the Americas
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: November 4, 1999
Indigenous people from nine South American countries won a precedent-
setting victory on Nov. 4 when the US Patent and Trademark Office
(PTO) canceled the patent issued to a US citizen for a variety of the
"ayahuasca" vine. The plant, Banisteriopsis caapi, is native to the
Amazon rainforest. More than 400 indigenous tribes in the region use
it in traditional religious and healing ceremonies. It is also the
principal ingredient in an hallucinogenic drink known in Colombia as
yage; a July article in the Miami Herald reported that about a dozen
indigenous shamans have begun providing rituals using the drink to
educated and prominent Bogota residents.
The patent on ayahuasca had been claimed in 1986 by Loren Miller,
owner of the California-based International Plant Medicine
Corporation, a firm which seeks out commercial uses for little-known
plants. The decision to cancel the patent came in response to a
request filed with the PTO in March by the Coordinating Body for the
Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), the Amazon
Alliance for Indigenous and Traditional Peoples, and lawyers at the
Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). The PTO based its
rejection of the patent on the fact that publications describing the
plant were "known and available" prior to the filing of the patent
application. According to US patent law, no invention can be patented
if described in printed publications more than one year prior to the
date of the patent application.
"While we are pleased that the PTO has cancelled this flawed patent,
we are concerned that the PTO still has not dealt with the flaws in
its policies that made it possible for someone to patent this plant
in the first place," said CIEL lawyer David Downes. "The PTO needs to
change its rules to prevent future patent claims based on the
traditional knowledge and use of a plant by indigenous peoples."
Downes also argued that "the PTO should face the issue head-on of
whether it is ethical for patent applicants to claim private rights
over a plant or knowledge that is sacred to a cultural or ethnic
group."
In a separate proceeding at the PTO, the three groups have called for
changes in PTO rules. They argue that the PTO should require that
patent applicants identify all biological resources and traditional
knowledge that they used in developing the claimed invention.
Applicants should also disclose the geographical origin, and provide
evidence that the source country and indigenous community consented
to its use.