Biodiveristy Program Current Activities:
Intellectual Property and Biodiversity

Biodiversity and knowledge about it are valuable in part because of their "information content."  As one of the main ways that our society decides who has the rights to control and benefit from information, intellectual property rights are relevant to the information content of biodiversity.  CIEL addresses the implications of intellectual property through advocacy, research, and advice.

What is economically valuable about the information content of biodiversity?  Biodiversity — especially in plants and marine organisms — benefits society as a source of new products and continued economic productivity.  Many of today’s most important pharmaceutical drugs are based on compounds originally found in diverse species of plants and other organisms.  Similarly, the productivity of modern agriculture is entirely dependent on the inclusion in widely used crop varieties of genes for disease resistance and other characteristics taken from traditional crops and wild relatives — termed "genetic resources" in the Biodiversity Convention — found mainly in the developing world.

Also important is informal knowledge about biodiversity, held in traditional knowledge systems of indigenous peoples and other local communities, especially in the developing world.   This knowledge is a valuable source for new products in these sectors, as well as for sustainable use and conservation of local ecosystems.

CIEL advocates the use and reform of intellectual property law in ways that affirm the rights of indigenous peoples and others who have conserved biodiversity and associated knowledge. 

Past advocacy work includes a March 1999 legal challenge to a US patent claimed on the "ayahuasca" vine, Banisteriopsis caapi, which is native to the Amazonian rainforest.  CIEL filed this request for reexamination of the patent with the US Patent and Trademark Office on behalf of the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) and the Coalition for Amazonian Peoples and Their Environment (the Amazon Alliance).  COICA objected to the patent because it purported to appropriate for a U.S. citizen a plant that is sacred to many indigenous peoples of the Amazon, used by them in religious and healing ceremonies.  

In March 1999, CIEL, COICA and the Amazon Coalition also asked the PTO to carry out a broader review of the impacts of its policies and procedures on traditional knowledge.  In August 1999, CIEL followed this request up with detailed recommendations for changes to PTO procedures on "prior art" that would better protect traditional knowledge.

The public interest concerns raised by intellectual property go beyond biodiversity and indigenous rights. They include not only environmental and ethical concerns — such as the morality of life patenting, and impacts on biodiversity and traditional knowledge — but also the growing inequality of access to information and technology between information haves and have nots, restrictions on access to improvements in health care and agriculture, possible anticompetitive effects in markets, and disproportionate impacts on developing country societies.  

The leading international standards on intellectual property are now found in the  Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) that binds all members of the World Trade Organization.   In the near future, the WTO faces important decisions about IPRs.  In 1998, CIEL prepared a discussion paper, The 1999 WTO Review of Life Patenting Under TRIPS, (also available in Spanish translation).  CIEL continues to work with other non-governmental organizations as well as developing country governments to address the public interest impacts of TRIPS. 

While the expansion of private intellectual property rights at the expense of the public domain poses threats to the interests of indigenous people and others seeking to preserve biodiversity, intellectual property could also offer tools for enhancing the ability of local communities to handle the pressures of the market economy on their resources.  In 1997 CIEL prepared a discussion paper exploring these issues, Using Intellectual Property as a Tool to Protect Traditional Knowledge, for a meeting on the protection of indigenous and local communities' rights under the Biodiversity Convention.  In 1999, CIEL attorney David Downes followed up this effort, coauthoring two papers produced for UNCTAD,  Innovative Mechanisms for Sharing Benefits of Biodiversity and Related Knowledge:  Case studies on geographical indications and trademarks, and Community Registries of Biodiversity-Related Knowledge.