Law to protect native intellectual property

LAW TO PROTECT NATIVE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

By Abraham Lama

LIMA, Jan 12 (IPS) - The Peruvian government is drafting a law to protect indigenous rights over their ancestral knowledge in an attempt to prevent the history of plundering native wealth from repeating itself, as well as controlling the international exploitation of Peru's native plants.

Indigenous communities will be the intellectual owners of genetic resources coming from plant species whose curative or nutritional values form part of their ancestral knowledge, according to the text of the legal bill.

'Peru is one of the countries with greatest biodiversity in the world and must begin utilising the competitive advantage this implies,' commented Jorge Caillaux, president of the Peruvian Environmental Law Society, 'but it must protect its natural resources as well as the rights of its population.'

'Researchers from transnational pharmaceutical firms travel throughout the country gathering information on the native pharmacopeia, they search for a species and take it back to their country to isolate its components and then produce them commercially,' he added.

The history of plundering Peru's native knowledge and technology, as old as the pillaging of its natural resources, began with the arrival of the Spanish colonisers.

Nothing can be done now about genetic rights to quinine, extracted from the 'quina' bush, nor about the potato, sweet potato, corn, rubber, or tobacco, which long ago became part of world knowledge and industrial use.

And perhaps nothing can be done about more recent natural products, such as cat's-claw, a plant whose bark boost the human immune system and is, as a result, effective in treating cancer and AIDS, and has been patented by laboratories in several countries as their own product.

'The story of quinine is illustrative of the plundering of indigenous communities' ancestral knowledge: in 1636 an Incan healer cured Spanish viceroy's wife of her recurrent malaria fevers using bark from the quina bush,' said Peruvian doctor Fernando Cabieses.

Excited about the results, the Count of Chichón's wife distributed the 'Countess's powder' to the people of Lima who suffered tertian fever. Jesuit priests in Peru sent the remedy to Europe with the name 'Jesuits powder,' and soon after, cardinal Lugo dispersed the miraculous medication under the name 'Cardinal's powder.'

'Rome in that era was the malaria capital of the world,' affirmed Cabieses, director of the National Institute of Traditional Medicine.

'Surrounded by marshes, its 'mal aire' (bad air) led to the disease's name 'malaria.' The unhealthy conditions of the Vatican meant that the seat of Christianity was nearly abandoned several times, after killing various Popes and dozens of cardinals,' he added.

By 1650, the mysterious remedy had become popular at the Vatican and awakened interest in other European capitals.

In 1679, Britain's Robert Talbot had quina plants sent from Peru and began to market the powder derivative, which in 1820, French chemists Pelletier and Caventou perfected, isolating quinine, or 'chinchonina,' named in honour of viceroy Chinchón's wife.

'They honoured the countess, but nobody ever remembered the Incan doctors who discovered its curative properties, who genetically developed the plant and used it for many years,' commented Cabieses.

The doctor explained that when the new law is approved, international pharmaceutical laboratories that currently exploit Peru's bio-genetic resources free of charge will have to pay the native communities for the right to continue.

Among those participating in drafting the legal bill are representatives from indigenous communities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and officials from the ministries of Health, Industry, Agriculture and from the National Institute in Defence of Intellectual Property (Indecopi).

The bill is at the stage of receiving comments and input from native communities and business organisations that will be involved in overseeing implementation. The draft of the final legal text is expected to come under debate in February.

'For the first time in the world, a government is proposing to establish protection for the collective knowledge of indigenous peoples, a system to regulate research, production and marketing of genetic resources,' said Beatriz Boza, of Indecopi.

The bill establishes regulations for access to genetic resources. If passed, it will make Peru the third nation in the world to possess such legislation, after the Philippines and Bolivia.

But unlike the Bolivian and Philippine laws on access to genetic resources, the Peruvian bill recognises native communities' ownership of the knowledge they and their ancestors have developed.

Brendan Tobin, of the non-governmental Association for the Defence of Natural Rights, said that 'when the law is applied, the communities will be able to grant pharmaceutical laboratories, via contracts, the right to use certain plants whose therapeutic value they have known about for years.'

Tobin, advisor to the jungle-dwelling Aguaruna community in its negotiations with the transnational firm Monsanto, expressed his support for the orientation and text of the proposed law.

According to the bill, pharmaceutical companies must earmark 0.5 percent of their profits from native-origin products to the Indigenous People's Development Fund, in addition to the price they agree to pay for the right to use each product.

'The bill is an important step forward because it establishes that money from this fund is to be managed by the indigenous people themselves,' said Tobin, 'Finally their rights are being recognised.'