Patent law and the protection of traditional knowledge

Legal protection of traditional knowledge associated to genetic resources is an issue that garnered the attention of the international community more than two decades ago. There is still a lot of work to do in order to identify an adequate system of regulation that will protect traditional knowledge, while at the same time satisfying the interests of national policy and the international community. The purpose of this paper is to analyze if the patent law regime is a suitable system to protect traditional knowledge. The idea is as follows. The first step is to consider the opinion of indigenous and local communities, in order to identify their interest in protecting their traditional knowledge under the patent regime and conciliate the Western cosmovision with their principles and values. Second, it is to adjust the concept of the legal standards to the national reality and the interests of the communities. Consequently, with the right approach, national governments can make it possible to traditional knowledge to comply with the TRIPS minimum requirements of patentability in order to get an effective protection.