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About
MIHR
PIPRA
Fiocruz, Brazil
bioDevelopments- Institute
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KARJALA, Dennis S
Dennis S. Karjala was an engineering/physics major at Princeton University and holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois (1965). He received his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1972, where he was editor-in-chief of the California Law Review and Order of the Coif. After five years of private practice in San Francisco, Dr. Karjala joined the College of Law at Arizona State University in January 1978 as Associate Professor. He has been a Professor of Law since the fall of 1981 and currently holds the Jack E. Brown Chair. His teaching and research are primarily in the area of intellectual property law, especially copyright and the application of intellectual property law to digital technologies. He has also taught and written on the subjects of corporate and securities law and federal income taxation. Dr. Karjala has also done some comparative work on Japanese copyright and corporate law. Dr. Karjala was active in the opposition to the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and in the Eldred case, which unsuccessfully challenged the constitutionality of the Copyright Term Extension Act.
Abstract
Biotechnology Patents and Indigenous Peoples
Abstract:
How do biotech patent systems affect indigenous peoples, particularly in relation to health products? This question raises two distinct issues. First, the question of biopiracy—to what extent do patent systems necessarily exploit traditional indigenous knowledge to produce valuable medicinal products? Second, the question of patenting gene-sequence and gene-product information taken from living organisms, especially human beings—how can we justify patenting naturally occurring substances? And how should we negotiate the myriad ethical issues that arise from doing so? This chapter argues that the core of the biopiracy problem is not the availability of patents based on traditional indigenous information but rather the unfair acquisition of knowledge and the inequitable sharing of profits derived from developing such information into a valuable product. Solving this problem requires ensuring that traditional information is fairly acquired and that fair compensation is paid to the group from which the information derives. In regards to patenting gene-sequence and gene-product information, this chapter concludes that such issues equally affect indigenous and nonindigenous populations and that the best way to address them is by making policy changes.
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