Last year India saw that biopiracy was damaging to the country and they reacted by documenting every plant and will release an encyclopedia of all the plants. They are specifically recording how these plants are used in traditional medicine in India, making it much harder for large foreign corporations to proclaim the use of plants as their idea.
Brazil is now doing something similar:
“Brazil has published a list of more than 5,000 generic terms from the Portuguese language related to Brazilian plant biological diversity to raise awareness and prevent further misuse of trademarks that hinder Brazilian exports.
The Brazilian government has been, and is, involved in a number of trademark disputes with companies that, for example, take a name of a fruit in Brazilian Portuguese and trademark it to get exclusive rights to commercialise it under that name in a certain country or region.”
Pumkin seeds tm????????????????? Water “from that river over there” Unlimited. Rain Co. How does one trademark life?
Glad to see that the Governements of Brazil and Portugal are working to protect their biodiversity. How ridiculous that nature is being manipulated so greatly for profit.
Good to know that people are fighting back!!!!