Delaney, Alyne, and Charlotte Hess. 2005. "Indigenous Knowledge." The Common Property Resource Digest 72.

Abstract

"Interest in indigenous knowledge (IK) especially that of biological resources has been increasing over the last two decades, particularly with the advance of information technologies. Individuals, corporations, and nation states compete to file patents on discoveries learned from IK. The number of patents filed has steadily grown over the past ten years. Large transnational corporations like Monsanto, DuPont and others have been investing into biotechnology in such a way that patents have been taken out on indigenous plants which have been used for generations by the local people, without their knowledge or consent. The people then find that the only way to use their age-old knowledge is be to buy them back from the big corporations. In Brazil, which has some of the richest biodiversity in the world, large multinational corporations have already patented more than half the known plant species."