Last week, at a conference in Geneva, the member states of the World Intellectual Property Organisation agreed on a new treaty aimed at preventing the for-profit piracy of traditional knowledge.
Biopiracy, where companies lift ideas from traditional knowledge and patent them, is a significant problem. For instance, a US company patented derivatives of the neem tree as pesticides, despite the plant’s properties being well-known to local communities in India. Similarly, attempts have been made to patent traditionally cultivated plant varieties, such as basmati rice and jasmine rice.
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