BIOPIRACY

When indigenous knowledge or a biological resource is used without the consent of the local people or the original inventor, it is considered Biopiracy. Many such cases have occurred in the case of patents; where private companies take the patent of indigenous knowledge such as to make medicines and commercialize it without the consent of the ethnic groups. It is an intellectual-level fraud for making a profit from bio-resources and indigenous knowledge.  

Biopiracy is a situation in which indigenous knowledge of nature, originating from indigenous people, is used by others for profit without their permission or without providing compensation to them.

A few cases of biopiracy are mentioned below;

1. Patenting of Azadirachta indica

The people of India have been using neem for time immemorial for various purposes. Indians shared the knowledge to all the world, however pirating this knowledge, the USDA and an American Multi National Company W. R. Grace got a Patent (No.0426257B) from the European patent Officer on the "method of controlling the plants by the aid of hydrophobic extracted from neem oil. 

2. Patenting of Basmati Rice:

Basmati is a long grained aromatic rice traditionally cultivated in North India. In 1997 the US patenting and trademark office granted a patent of Basmati to an American company named Rise Tec Inc. The company claimed that they invented the rice variety! 

3. Rice Biopiracy:

A biotech company Syngenta had signed an MOU with Indira Gandhi Agricultural University to access Dr. Richcharia's (former director of Central Rice Research Institute and known as the Rice sage of India) priceless collection of 22,972 varieties of rice.