Poisons and politics – Indigenous rights and IP protection

There is a heightened awareness worldwide of the importance of pharmaceutical materials derived from naturally occurring organisms, particularly plants found in the tropics. In this context, the article explores the practical and political aspects of the interface between the indigenous rights relating to the traditional knowledge of such ‘natural medicines’ and the interests of the countries and companies that build on that knowledge in providing widely available and improved medicines. The article refers to traditional knowledge databases and looks at two regimes of prior informed consent and benefit sharing, the contractual and disclosure approaches. Many of the key issues are highly political, with developed and developing countries having widely different approaches. The article concludes that many of these issues are likely to run for many years before being fully resolved.