Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Gets Taste of Own Patent Medicine
cheesedog writes "A few Andean countries have turned the tables on U.S. requests for more forceful expansion of patent law, requesting broader protection for indigenous plants and tribal uses of natural medicines. At first glance this seems like a win for these countries, but it is also a major braodening of the definition of what kinds of ideas can be locked away from the public in government-granted monopolies. As Right to Create notes: 'Let us hope that those involved in these negotiations, particularly those representing us in the U.S., see this for what it is: a de facto demonstration of how ridiculous our intellectual monopoly regime has become, and how insane our demands on the rest of the world's citizens are.'"
Nice, the linked article shows a 404. Here is another article about the subject
So, suddenly because someone send a researcher to the rain forest, to learn how indigenous people used some plants, they suddenly have exclusives right to the product of those plants, and you pretend that even them (i.e. the people that have used the plants forever) have to pay royalties? Its kind of odd, dont you think? If anyone has any rights to the medicinal application of the plant species, is the ones that have been using them for a long time, not the US that puts them into a plastic bottle and pattents it in your country (mostly because people can patent even a Turd shape over there).