Modernizing Traditional Medicine and the Law

关于生物活性植物的传统知识形式提出了关于著作权的中心地位、财产的定义、所有权义务和专利制度的地域性的问题，从而挑战了目前对知识产权(IP)的法律和科学理解。对于政策制定者、社会科学家和那些寻求将知识产权利益公平分配给传统群体的人来说，了解这些形式的知识如何有效地与全球知识产权制度相交是一个重要的问题。为了解决这一问题，本研究调查了在非洲研究传统医学的科学家和科学机构如何以及为什么正在创新新的可持续的知识产权形式，因为实施主要国际财产协议的宽限期即将结束，发展中国家被迫完成向新的全球财产制度的过渡。这项研究调查了治疗师、患者、科学家、科学机构和私营公司之间正在出现的以使传统医学现代化的名义出现的新的合作形式的形成和运作；说明了可持续健康愿景中固有的财产和健康之间的关系；并描述了在努力发展传统医学以促进可持续健康方面正在设想的公有形式。为了做到这一点，这项研究使用了人种学工具来检查坦桑尼亚的两个研究中心在研究传统药物期间解释、应用和重新制定全球知识产权政策的方式。更广泛的影响包括创建国际研究和出版网络、教育和能力建设倡议，以及关于如何将传统形式的知识公平地纳入国际产权制度的可转让知识。该项目还将把非洲了解和创新的方式引入关于财产、公有领域和公地的新的法律辩论中，努力促进保护植物生命和源于植物生命的公共知识的新可能性。

Traditional forms of knowledge about bioactive plants have challenged current legal and scientfic understandings of intellectual property (IP) by raising questions about the centrality of authorship, the definition of property, the obligations of ownership, and the territoriality of the patent system. Understanding how these forms of knowledge can productively intersect with global IP regimes is an important question for policymakers, social scientists, and those seeking to fairly distribute IP benefits to traditional groups. To address this issue, this study investigates how and why scientists and scientific institutions investigating traditional medicine in Africa are innovating new sustainable forms of intellectual property as the grace periods for the implementation of the major international property agreements near their end and developing countries are compelled to complete the transition to the new global property regime. The study investigates the formation and operation of new forms of collaboration that are emerging between healers, patients, scientists, scientific institutions and private companies in the name of modernizing traditional medicine; accounts for the relationship between property and health that inheres in visions of sustainable health; and describes the forms of commons that are being imagined in efforts to develop traditional medicine with the goal of contributing to sustainable health. To do so, the study uses ethnographic tools to examine the ways that two research centers in Tanzania are interpreting, applying and re-working global intellectual property policies during their research into traditional medicines. Broader impacts include the creation of international research and publication networks, educational and capacity building initiatives, and transferrable knowledge about how traditional forms of knowledge can be fairly integrated into international property regimes. This project will also bring African ways of knowing and innovating into emerging legal debates on property, public domain, and the commons in an effort to catalyze new possibilities for the protection of plant life and communal knowledge derived from plant life.