Page "Ayahuasca" Paragraph 71

Ayahuasca has also stirred debate regarding intellectual property protection of traditional knowledge.

In 1986 the US Patent and Trademarks Office allowed the granting of a patent on the ayahuasca vine B. Caapi.

It allowed this patent based on the assumption that ayahuasca's properties had not been previously described in writing.

Several public interest groups, including the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin ( COICA ) and the Coalition for Amazonian Peoples and Their Environment ( Amazon Coalition ) objected.

In 1999 they brought a legal challenge to this patent which had granted a private US citizen " ownership " of the knowledge of a plant that is well-known and sacred to many indigenous peoples of the Amazon, and used by them in religious and healing ceremonies.

Later that year the PTO issued a decision rejecting the patent, on the basis that the petitioners ' arguments that the plant was not " distinctive or novel " were valid.

However, the decision did not acknowledge the argument that the plant's religious or cultural values prohibited a patent.

In 2001, after an appeal by the patent holder, the US Patent Office reinstated the patent.

The law at the time did not allow a third party such as COICA to participate in that part of the reexamination process.

The patent, held by US entrepreneur Loren Miller, expired in 2003.