Trade secret strategy for TEK

Using the trade secret strategy for Indigenous intellectual property

Some strategy insights from the Silicon Valley intellectual property dogfights for Indigenous advocates. 😈

Indigenous knowledge has a lot of terms. Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is commonly used in planetary science, but in my previous career in preventive medicine we’d see a lot of knowledge extraction until ethnobotany protocols stepped in to control it.

Better planet knowledge ethics, please

I’d really love to see the same level of control for TEK in planetary science, agrobiodiversity, conservation biology, and agroforestry. One way to get it is by applying the trade-secret trick.

Ethnobotony lost billions of dollars from drugs like captopril, then wised up and started working under Nagoya protocols, and World Intellectual Property Institute (WIPO). Just Google all that stuff. Or ask Chiron for references. But here’s the captopril example which is the one I always use.

Captopril as a case study for lack of respect

Captopril earned roughly $1.6 billion in peak annual sales (1991) and over $8 billion cumulatively for pharma, while Brazil, Sérgio Ferreira, and Indigenous knowledge-holders (often cited as the Tupi), received zero royalties or benefit-sharing.

Every authoritative source — peer-reviewed, journalistic, and NGO — agrees that no royalties, benefit-sharing, or compensation flowed to Brazil, to Sérgio Ferreira personally, or to any Indigenous group. - Claude research

The case happened before the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and Brazil's 2015 benefit-sharing law (Law 13,123), so its an exmple of why we need laws, not legally actionable.

The reports are that Indigenous Brazilian peoples (sometimes identified as Tupi, sometimes left generic) applied Bothrops jararaca venom to arrowheads, and this ethnopharmacological knowledge informed captopril's development.

The primary scientific record does not credit this source. Ferreira's 1965 British Journal of Pharmacology paper, Cushman and Ondetti's 1991 Hypertension historical account, and Smith and Vane's 2003 FASEB Journal retrospective all trace the lineage to Maurício Rocha e Silva's 1948 laboratory discovery of bradykinin at the Instituto Biológico in São Paulo University of Bristol — motivated by Western clinical observations of hypotensive collapse in snakebite victims, not by Indigenous ethnopharmacology.

Who do we believe? And does it matter? I would argue that this tension underlies so much of my current work, whether it’s ‘friendly’ scouting phone calls from Global North, academic researchers negotiating site visits, or data dogfights that happen behind the scenes at our sites constantly.

Because there is so much oovert TEK knowledge extraction in the planetary science, regenerative agriculture, conservation biology BINGOs, and agriculture academic space. Our response has been to adopt trade secrets as a solution.

Simple solutions to teach respect

We’ve been applying a very simple and known strategy in the startup world to a horrifically persistent equity problem for Indigenous Peoples. As Indigenous data sovereignty (IDsov) experts know all too well, scaring off bioprospecting, biopiracy, academic extraction, and cultural misappropriation are really routine parts of the job for any advocate or bicultural negotiator. Fernando Lezama and Hector Jhony Lopez intuitively advocated for this from the beginning.

As Silicon Valley knows all too well (I’ve been coached on it in multiple high-end accelerators), when information is actually valuable, protecting that intellectual property in a licensed, copyrighted, academically published, trademarked, or even patented format is just not enough.

The correct path is a “trade secret” approach. Basically, three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead. Just don’t share it. Period, share the fruits, results, whatever don’t bother even publishing the information to protect it. Too many jerks (patent trolls) sitting around at patent offices trying to steal stuff.

It's kind of a no-brainer to use the trade secret model for any community TEK, and I wish that more "nature" startups working with Indigenous Peoples respected, recommended, facilitated, and used this approach when working with communities.

Savimbo policy: Just don’t tell us

I tell communities all the time, I absolutely don’t want to know your trade secrets. Medicinal plants, cultivation techniques, cultural rituals, languages, rare species locations, etc. etc. etc. Just don't tell me! We're rewarding outcomes, your special sauce is totally your special sauce and I will always celebrate your right to keep it special, secret, private, proprietary, and great asset for generations to come.

References:

• Tough dogfight to protect Indigenous plant knowledge for psychedelics at WIPO lst year. (Nice work done by the Huni Kuin and their advocates.)

• Big fan of Andrew Weil and Laura Ash at Beneficial Plant Research Association (BPRA) founded ages ago for ethical commercialization of plant knowledge, and whole-plant clinical trials.