Intellectual property

[Gustavo Morejon J.]

As far as I know, the only "legal aspect" , or maybe "ethical aspect" on
 intellectual property of systematic collections is the one concerning to the
 general knowledge of the scientific community.  It means that what you have
 published as YOUR work in a given date is actually the only document to prove
 it.  But, Why do we have to develop such kind of aspects when we don't have
 enough sistematists to deal with the world's biodiversity, specially in the
 tropics ?  If the information about sistematic works begin to be restricted,
 the develop of sistematic biology is going to be slower than ever.  I mean, now
 is an endagered field of science, so What can we expect if we begin to work in
 the usual commercial way ?

        The real problem comes when you are dealing with commercial development of
 products derived from organisms.  If you are working on the development of
 chemicals derived from a wild plant discovered for you, for example, you need
 to make it of your intellectual property by the current legal aspects of the
 patent sistems ( Some are available in the net sistems ).  In the conference of
 Rio, it was a hot spot :  Do we have to give the rights on an organism to the
 countries of origin of such organism ?  I think that we have to, but.... When
 you are dealing with less developed countries you may have serious problems
 because a big percentage of the sistematists working on this countries are
 foreigners.  So, What can we do ?

        I guess that the only solution is to deal separately with sistematic biology
 and the products and genetic varieties of wild organisms.  Sistematic biology
 is not a commercial science, definitively!  But, genetic engineering and
 related sciences are highly commercial.  Maybe if we walk in that direction we
 can make things much more clear. :-)

Gustavo Morejon
International Federation of Scientific Societies
Cuenca - Ecuador, South America
gmorejon at fiss.org.ec