What counts as biopiracy?
The word ‘biopiracy’ was coined by the North American advocacy group, Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group) — formerly known as Rural Advancement Foundation International — to refer to the uncompensated commercial use of biological resources or associated TK from developing countries, as well as the patenting by corporations of claimed inventions based on such resources or knowledge. ETC Group and others allege that such patents are wrongly awarded. This could be due to a number of factors: the examiners may not have enough time and resources to conduct ‘prior art’ searches; the required standards of inventiveness being applied to patent applications may be too low; or the companies or scientific institutions applying for the patents may deliberately fail to cite the prior art upon which their inventions were based. Groups such as ETC claim to have uncovered many cases either of patents being acquired for ‘inventions’ that are closely based on TK (such as th
