Millennial Demand for Alternative Medicine and Its Effects on Biopiracy
An article co-authored by Atlanta associates Tiffany Palmer, Alexis Simpson, and Pharan Evans was featured in the March-April issue of Landslide® magazine, a publication of the American Bar Association Section of Intellectual Property Law. The article explores millennial demand for alternative medicine and its effects on biopiracy. In particular, the article discusses the legal and ethical concerns related to commercially accessing plants and herbs from developing countries, a practice encompassed in the terms “bioprospecting” and “biopiracy.” Bioprospecting can refer broadly to the search for biological resources (and sometimes the accompanying indigenous knowledge) for commercialization, while biopiracy refers more specifically to commercializing those resources and/or knowledge without identifying or compensating the source. The article focuses on the pitfalls for companies in the alternative medicine space using real-life examples involving turmeric (sourced from Pakistan and India), maca (sourced from Peru), rooibos (sourced from South Africa), and quinoa (sourced from Bolivia).