IPTango: PIIPA

Monday, 7 March 2011

PIIPA helps get to the root of maca biopiracy

Jeremy March 07, 2011 No comments:

The February 2011 PIIPA Monthly Case Study, entitled "Traditional Knowledge & Biopiracy: The Peruvian Maca Root", explains that the maca root is an herbaceous, perennial, cultivated crop that is native to the Andes in Peru. Maca plants have medicinal values that include increasing libido, stamina, fertility and alleviating insomnia -- which presumably makes them useful for bloggers. For centuries, the people in the Andes have been using the maca root for its medicinal properties and now maca is exported around the world. The Peruvian people’s use of maca for medicinal purposes is an example of traditional knowledge.

PIIPA -- the Public Interest Intellectual Property Advisors -- records that the National Institute for the Defense of Competition and Intellectual Property (INDECOPI) is a Peruvian government agency charged with the responsibility for market promotion and protection of consumer rights, as well as ensuring honest competition while protecting all forms of intellectual property. It seems that INDECOPI discovered that there were over 100 patents directed to inventions related to Peruvian indigenous plants, the maca root or that included maca derivatives in the patent claims. With the pro bono assistance of US law firm Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox, INDECOPI formulated an anti-biopiracy policy which involved the compilation of a dossier of maca-related prior art as well as lodging some patent oppositions.

You can download the full case study here.

Friday, 11 July 2008

PIIPA seeks volunteer: can you help?

Jeremy July 11, 2008 No comments:

Public Interest Intellectual Property Advisors, Inc. (PIIPA) is seeking assistance from a suitably-qualified volunteer to assist a Colombian Indian Shaman-healer from the Putumayo region of the Amazon in Colombia. According to PIIPA,

"In the 1970s-1980s, a U.S. university anthropologist recorded the sacred healing music of the assistance seeker. Assistance seeker's sacred music is currently being sold without his permission as CD recordings via the internet. The assistance seeker speaks Spanish, and, perhaps, English. The assistance seeker is affiliated with a nonprofit organization, and the subject matter advances the public interest in traditional knowledge and culture".

Further details are available from the PIIPA website here

Some IPTango moves

* Listed as one of the "Best blogs on Intellectual and Industrial Property Law". The University of Alicante Intellectual Property & Information Technology Project (UAIPIT).

* One of the only two Latin American blog listed in the "Top 100 Intellectual Property Blogs". Feedspot, as of May 2021.

* Listed as one of the "Top 15 Blogs For An Intellectual Property (IP) Enthusiasts". Buzzfeed.com, January 2017.

* Listed as one of the "World's Best IP Blogs". BananaIP.com, December 2015.

* IPTango founder Professor Jeremy Phillips was listed as one of the Managing Intellectual Property magazine's "Fifty Most Influential People" of 2005, 2011, 2013, and 2014.

* Listed as one of the "Influential intellectual property blawgs". A Dictionary of Intellectual Property Law, Peter Groves, 2011.

* Listed as one of the "Communities of Blawgers". Los blogs jurídicos y la web 2.0. para la difusión y la enseñanza del derecho, Gonzalo Ramírez Cleves, 2010.