French Research Group Pledges to Share Patent Benefits with Indigenous Groups

On February 5, 2016, the Institute for Development Research (IRD), based in Marseille, France, released a statement that it is pledging to share benefits from the isolation of a plant compound in French Guiana found to have anti-malaria activity. The statement comes after the IRD was criticised for patenting the compound without acknowledging the indigenous populations who led IRD researchers to the plant.

The compound was first analyzed by IRD researchers for its anti-malarial properties in 2005, after they had interviewed members of various indigenous populations who had praised the plant as a traditional remedy against malaria. In March of 2015, the IRD was granted a patent from the European Patent Agency for the isolation of Simalikalactone E (SkE) from Quassia amara, a small red-flowered tree native to Central and South America.

Criticism of the IRD aimed to highlight the possible injustice facing the indigenous populations who had contributed to the development of the innovation, but who would now be prohibited from exploiting their own remedies, a practice often referred to as “biopiracy”.

In hopes of preventing such injustices, the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity international agreement was developed. The protocol aims at sharing the benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources in a fair and equitable way.

France will be adopting the protocol as early as summer 2016 in a new biodiversity law. In Canada, the protocol has yet to be adopted. However, benefit sharing is an objective of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which was ratified by Canada in 1992. The federal government has since established a working group in order to determine the best method of implementing a domestic benefit sharing policy in Canada.

For more on benefit-sharing in Canada, see: http://tinyurl.com/zcf3wra