Pharmaceutical patents on plant derived materials in Brazil: Policy, law and statistics

This article starts with a commentary on the importance of natural products for today’s society, emphasizing the relevance of Brazilian biodiversity in the world scenario, as well as the need to protect research results in this area notwithstanding the controversies related to this protection. A survey is then presented based on patent documents involving 278 native Brazilian plants. The object of this survey was to verify how the patent system is used by Brazilian companies, universities and research institutions to protect the results of research on these plants. The survey also served to identify the main patent applicants, both Brazilian and foreign, the main plants whose derivatives are objects of protection (forms of Hypericum, Allium, Eucalyptus and Aloe are the top 4, for instance) and the types of inventions protected. The results showed that, inter alia, 66.9% of these Brazilian plants are the object of patent documents. This article also verified that the main patent holders of these patents documents are foreign applicants (94.2%). Brazilian companies, universities and research institutions are a minority of applicants (5.89%). Finally, this article presents some proposals to alter the current situation in this field.