A proteção da biodiversidade e dos conhecimentos tradicionais associados em face aos direitos de propriedade intelectual

Abstract

Brazil is home to the greatest biological diversity on the planet, including several native species of global economic interest. It also houses hundreds of indigenous peoples and traditional communities who, by living in constant contact with nature, bring together a wealth of traditional knowledge associated with biodiversity, highly targeted by the pharmaceutical, cosmetological, agrochemical and food industry for directing research for the purpose of access and collection of biological resources, in order to find new substances useful for the manufacture of marketable products. It turns out that many companies resort to biopiracy to obtain biological and genetic material, take advantage of traditional knowledge and end up registering patents of products and processes precluding the country of origin, indigenous peoples and traditional communities from enjoying benefits arising from economic exploitation of its resources. Thus, this work is a brief analysis of how the legal protection of biodiversity and associated traditional knowledge relates to current intellectual property and patent law. It was concluded that the protection afforded by the CBD, the Nagoya Protocol and the Brazilian Law is not yet sufficient to ensure the protection of the legal goods in question, since these three instruments were influenced by developed countries, rich in biotechnology and poor in biodiversity, during their development.