Intellectual property rights
TRIPS and indigenous medicines
The bio-piracy of developed countries
Authors:
E. Mudzonga
Publisher:
Trade and Development Studies Centre – Trust, Zimbabwe, 2007
The paper discusses Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) and indigenous medicines. It attempts to bring out issues around these two subjects that are of serious concern between developing countries and the developed countries. It also highlights the values and threats to indigenous knowledge and provides cases of bio-piracy where indigenous knowledge is used without prior consent of the rightful owners of such knowledge
The author argues that while developing countries boast of plenty of bio-diversity resources, the developed countries have produced technologies that exploit these and commercialise them for profit at the expense of the developing countries. They use ingredients from developing countries which they patent to prohibit their use by any other individual without paying royalties and thus no benefit sharing. Distribution tends to be concentrated towards the equator and these are places where the developing countries are geographically configured.
The author concludes that:
- while it is difficult to place intellectual property rights for medicines in the public domain , it is unwise to ignore the fact that some form of protection is needed especially taking into account that there is a general shift from production of synthetic medicines to natural ones and these have proven to have little or no side effects
- Africa needs to continue putting pressure to influence the evolution of international law that is responsive to the needs of developing countries
- the global biodiversity issue can only be solved by merging the relevant conventions because TRIPS alone can almost impossibly do so as it will be counteractive to its commercial motive
- traditional medicines belong to developing countries - if they do not develop them nobody else will.
