We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Pharmaceuticals and Biopiracy: How the America Invents Act May Reduce the Misappropriation of Traditional Medicine.
- Authors
Levy, Ryan; Green, Spencer
- Abstract
For decades, Eastern traditional medicine has been misappropriated by others who claim it as their own and attempt to obtain patent protection for it. As long this practice has existed, the international community has pushed back against it. Several countries and international bodies have created databases of traditional knowledge, hoping to preclude the issuance of patents on that knowledge. Other countries, like Thailand, have extended intellectual property protection to the traditional knowledge stakeholders themselves. However, a recent change to U.S. patent law may have the unintended consequence of helping resolve the issue of biopiracy. Prior to the passage of the America Invents Act, a foreign invention could only serve as prior art to U.S. patents if the foreign invention itself was patented or if it was described in a printed publication. Because much traditional knowledge was never recorded, U.S. law did not consider it to be prior art. This allowed corporations to obtain patent protection for traditional medicine, even though indigenous peoples had been using it for centuries. The America Invents Act, however, eliminated the requirement that a public use occur "in this country" to constitute prior art. As a result, public use of traditional knowledge anywhere in the world renders it prior art to all subsequent U.S. patent applications. This article analyzes how this dramatic shift in the scope of available prior art affects the patent strategies of companies and provides different remedies to traditional knowledge stakeholders.
- Subjects
UNITED States; BIOPIRACY; TRADITIONAL medicine; PATENT law; LEGAL status of stakeholders; INVENTIONS; PRINTED publication bar (Patents); MEDICAL laws
- Publication
University of Miami Business Law Review, 2015, Vol 23, Issue 3, p401
- ISSN
2376-4007
- Publication type
Article