# Help me understand "Indigenous intellectual property" **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 17, 2011, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887 "2011-06-17T22:13:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/21 "2011-06-18T22:03:52Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Disney owns the rights to the creations its employees created for it. It’s work for hire. If a tribe wants to form a corporation, it’s entitled to the rights for all works created by that corporation. But it’s not entitled to go back into history and claim exclusive ownership of past ideas. [You must avenge my death Kimba… I mean Simba!](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimba_the_White_Lion#The_Lion_King_controversy) 😉 https://www.youtube.com/embed/S17CeXaFBlQ?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque Not much related but that was the first thing that came to me, Disney has been a dick regarding some of its “creations”. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/22 "2011-06-18T22:23:09Z")
> [@sh1bu1](#): > > So you are backpedaling from only individuals having rights to IP? I’m not backpedaling. But I didn’t see the need to offer a discourse on copyright law. For legal purposes, a corporation is a legal individual and it can own a copyright. But my point is that the copyright holder has to be the person or legal equivalent of a person who created the work. The Disney Corporation holds the copyright to _High School Musical_ because it hired people to create that movie. But the Disney Corporation can’t decide it owns _Gone With the Wind_ just because it was made in California. > [@](#): > > Well the invention of both vaccination and anesthesia are/were patentable, so I’m not sure I get your point. Patent laws would have given the inventors and their heirs rights to the IP for a certain period of time following them making them public. Exactly. I have no problem with the actual inventor owning the rights to his creation. And if the inventor dies before the rights expire he can pass them on to his heirs like any other property. But that doesn’t mean that an entire ethnic group owns the rights. I’m an American. Americans invented airplanes and television and polio vaccine. But that doesn’t mean I invented any of that stuff and there’s no reason I’m entitled to any ownership of those inventions just because I happen to live in the same society as the people who did. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2011, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/23 "2011-06-18T22:27:22Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Not much related but that was the first thing that came to me, Disney has been a dick regarding some of its “creations”. I have no problem with Osamu Tezuka’s estate suing the ass off of Disney Corporation. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/24 "2011-06-19T01:39:37Z")
There’s nothing contrary to treating an ethnic group like an individual as well, if they are clearly acting as one. What you are basically saying is that people who sign a piece of paper have more rights than people who don’t. If a group of indigenous people want to get together and sue for illegal use of property, what is that to you? Why should there communal ownership be any different from, say, Wikipedia’s? Are you really proposing that everyone must have a copyleft license created in order to have something other than our culture’s standards for property? That seems, well, rather ethnocentric. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/25 "2011-06-19T01:43:16Z")
I’m okay with a didgeridoo arrangement of Beethoven’s Ninth, if anyone wants to perform one. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/26 "2011-06-19T02:06:54Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > There’s nothing contrary to treating an ethnic group like an individual as well, if they are clearly acting as one. Then that would be a corporation claiming to act in the interests of the members of a certain ethnic group. Confusing that corporation with the ethnicity is a horrible error and can only lead to frank racism in the laws. > [@](#): > > What you are basically saying is that people who sign a piece of paper have more rights than people who don’t. Sometimes this is the case. For example, if I don’t sign a piece of paper transferring the title to a piece of land to my name, I have fewer rights over that property than if I do sign that paper. > [@](#): > > If a group of indigenous people want to get together and sue for illegal use of property, what is that to you? Quite a lot, if it means my world gets poorer as a result. Not to mention the rather daft idea of an ethnic group being able to stop the production of a drug because they claim ownership of a plant or some such rot. That nonsense might actually kill people. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/27 "2011-06-19T02:10:53Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > If a group of indigenous people want to get together and sue for illegal use of property, what is that to you? “Illegal use of property” assumes a law that protects said property. What/where is that law? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/28 "2011-06-19T02:58:28Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > There’s nothing contrary to treating an ethnic group like an individual as well, if they are clearly acting as one. What you are basically saying is that people who sign a piece of paper have more rights than people who don’t. > > If a group of indigenous people want to get together and sue for illegal use of property, what is that to you? Why should there communal ownership be any different from, say, Wikipedia’s? Are you really proposing that everyone must have a copyleft license created in order to have something other than our culture’s standards for property? > > That seems, well, rather ethnocentric. No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that indigenous people should have the same intellectual property rights that everyone else has. If I go out in my backyard tomorrow and discover some plant with a medical use, I’m entitled to the benefits of my discovery. If some Amazon tribesman discovers a plant with a medical use, he should be entitled to the benefits of his discovery. If the tribesman or I want to donate our property right to some larger group, we’re free to do so. But no larger group is entitled to claim a share of our rights. The tribe didn’t discover the plant - a person did. To the degree there’s any ethnocentrism involved, I’d say it’s ethnocentric to treat indigenous people as if they are merely anonymous parts of a tribe while acknowledging westerners as individuals. ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/29 "2011-06-19T04:12:30Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > …I have no problem with the actual inventor owning the rights to his creation. And if the inventor dies before the rights expire he can pass them on to his heirs like any other property. > > But that doesn’t mean that an entire ethnic group owns the rights. I’m an American. Americans invented airplanes and television and polio vaccine. But that doesn’t mean I invented any of that stuff and there’s no reason I’m entitled to any ownership of those inventions just because I happen to live in the same society as the people who did. An ethnic group would make little sense, but a tribe or isolated geographic region is another. Indians in the Amazons don’t have corporations, but they probably more closely affiliated than a company like IBM is. We made up a legal structure that allows groups of individuals to collectively have the same rights as a person. We could just as easily do the same for tribal groups. Just because we haven’t doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. Powerful individuals and corporations rip off poorer ones all the time. The people who came up with the blues riffs never made a dime, while people who took their accomplishment made millions. The powerful European countries came to the New Word and stole land from the natives, then put a system in place to protect what they stole. Bending a little to compensate indigenous people is a way to demonstrate that we have progressed a little as a society. ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/30 "2011-06-19T04:16:10Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > Not to mention the rather daft idea of an ethnic group being able to stop the production of a drug because they claim ownership of a plant or some such rot. That nonsense might actually kill people. Yeah, but it’s OK for corporations to have exclusive rights to medicine even though making it more widely available would save lives. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/31 "2011-06-19T05:57:11Z")
> [@sh1bu1](#): > > An ethnic group would make little sense, but a tribe or isolated geographic region is another. Indians in the Amazons don’t have corporations, but they probably more closely affiliated than a company like IBM is. We made up a legal structure that allows groups of individuals to collectively have the same rights as a person. We could just as easily do the same for tribal groups. Just because we haven’t doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. I find it dehumanizing. You’re basically saying that these people aren’t individuals like you and me - they’re just parts of the Awa tribe. That’s no different than telling somebody they’re just a part of the General Motors Corporation. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/32 "2011-06-19T07:55:08Z")
> [@sh1bu1](#): > > I can see the case that someone traveling to a remote area of South America and learning about the use of a plant for medical purposes should not be able to go home and claim it as his intellectual property without at least some sort of compensation to the people he learned it from. By what mechanism would our hypothetical traveler use to claim a product existing in nature (a plant in this case) as his intellectual property? Now if he took some samples of the plant, isolated the active ingredient that treats ailments and synthesized a much purer substance then you can make a case that he has created something protected by intellectual property laws of one kind or another. Showing up with a plant isn’t going to cut it though. > [@](#): > > Imagine that a tribe in the Amazon decided to make T Shirts with Andy Warhol designs on them and sell them in the United States. They would be in violation of the law. But people take indigenous people designs and reproduce them with no royalties. What if they made shirts with images of the Mona Lisa, George Washington or Zeus? Would that be okay? ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/33 "2011-06-19T14:10:25Z")
> [@sh1bu1](#): > > Yeah, but it’s OK for corporations to have exclusive rights to medicine even though making it more widely available would save lives. They don’t own the plant; they own what they actually created. There’s a difference there. Also, it ultimately isn’t up to drug companies to reform the healthcare system. That is, for better and worse, the government’s job, and the cause of universal health care cannot be helped by adding further arbitrary restrictions to who can use drugs. ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/34 "2011-06-19T14:55:40Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > They don’t own the plant; they own what they actually created. There’s a difference there. > > Also, it ultimately isn’t up to drug companies to reform the healthcare system. That is, for better and worse, the government’s job, and the cause of universal health care cannot be helped by adding further arbitrary restrictions to who can use drugs. Oh, I must have missed your thread on reforming IP laws on pharmaceuticals. I thought you were just wanting to restrict the rights of poor people. ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/35 "2011-06-19T14:57:35Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I find it dehumanizing. You’re basically saying that these people aren’t individuals like you and me - they’re just parts of the Awa tribe. That’s no different than telling somebody they’re just a part of the General Motors Corporation. Just? They can’t be both like you and me? Who is being dehumanizing? ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/36 "2011-06-19T15:14:02Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > By what mechanism would our hypothetical traveler use to claim a product existing in nature (a plant in this case) as his intellectual property? Now if he took some samples of the plant, isolated the active ingredient that treats ailments and synthesized a much purer substance then you can make a case that he has created something protected by intellectual property laws of one kind or another. Showing up with a plant isn’t going to cut it though. There are plenty of plants that require processing before use. Vanilla beans must be sweated under blankets to ferment; in their natural state they have no flavor. Coffee needs to be dried in a particular manner and then roasted. Some foods need to be chewed and then spat out in a container and left to ferment, other plants need to be carefully treated to remove poisons before consuming. Some dude walking in the forest who come across these plants doesn’t know any of that, but he can learn the “method” of preparation from the locals which is clearly patentable. If your six year old kid draws a picture she is covered under copyright, and someone couldn’t just take that and use it without her permission. If a tribe has developed a way to use a particular plant as medicine or food, and it is not widely used outside their group, I think they deserve the same protection and compensation. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/37 "2011-06-19T15:15:06Z")
> [@sh1bu1](#): > > I thought you were just wanting to restrict the rights of poor people. You’d do better to direct your argument against what he actually said, and not what you imagine might underlie it. Also: isn’t the assumption that indigenous = poor more than a trifle patronizing? ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/38 "2011-06-19T15:31:09Z")
> [@sh1bu1](#): > > If your six year old kid draws a picture she is covered under copyright, and someone couldn’t just take that and use it without her permission. If a tribe has developed a way to use a particular plant as medicine or food, and it is not widely used outside their group, I think they deserve the same protection and compensation. Note that the IP associated with medicines (and no doubt foods) is protected by patent; a copyright doesn’t apply here. Note also that if the medicine/food is in use elsewhere - even if not wide use - it’s going to be tough to patent it. And that patents expire - typically in 20 years. So if the item has been in use for a good while, IP protection may not apply. ---
**Author:** ![Kevbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e47774/32.png) [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/39 "2011-06-19T15:42:01Z")
Patents and copyrights expire eventually. (well, until Disney pays off the next generation of congressmen) . Hasn’t most of the IP these groups would like to claim been around, by their reckoning, since time began? ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2011, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887/40 "2011-06-19T15:59:41Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > Convict #3345: “Indigenous Intellectual Property violations. I was an IT project manager, and decided to “theme” my project’s weekly status meeting by calling it a “Pow-Wow” and requiring that the person speaking wear a feather and hold an empty tobacco pipe. It turns out that since I have no Native American blood, it is an offense for me to use Native cultural property, no matter how old, without first getting a tribe’s permission. Joe on the TEQ team almost went to jail too with his “Gathering of the Clan” themed meetings with kilts and claymores, but he was able to show a great-great-grandparent from Inverness and got off because Indigenous Intellectual Property laws don’t apply if you have a claim to being part of the culture.” But what it I and a bunch of my friends get together and declare ourselves the Wasichu tribe? Or if a bunch of Gypsies in Ireland get together and call themselves the O’Roma? 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-indigenous-intellectual-property/585887.md?page=3)