[at-l] FYI:National Park Service To Allow Commercial Bioprospecting

[camojack at comcast.net]

http://www1.nature.nps.gov/benefitssharing/research.cfm

Research and Biodiversity Prospecting
Bioprospecting can sometimes be a consequence of an academic science project. Such serendipitous bioprospecting is allowed and even encouraged by federal law and NPS policy. Other bioprospectors have a clear goal, such as discovering a new medicine, enzyme, or other useful compound. Targeted bioprospecting is also allowed in the NPS since it is a part of broad scientific inquiry.
Research specimens collected from parks are never sold. There is an important distinction between "sale or commercial use" of natural products collected from national parks (which is prohibited under 36 C.F.R. § 2.1) and the discovery of valuable useful applications from research results (whether commercialized or not). In other words, research specimens cannot be commercialized, but the knowledge gained in conducting research can be used commercially. This distinction is supported by developments in U.S. intellectual property rights laws and has been explicitly recognized at some national parks such as Yellowstone that host major research activities. In addition, a federal court has upheld the legality of the distinction between NPS research specimen collection and research results.
Just as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant licenses to use biological materials acquired from NIH in exchange for certain negotiated benefits without transfer of ownership, park research permits do not grant any exclusive or proprietary rights to the researcher.
NPS research permits operate in ways similar to the biological materials transfer agreements issued by the NIH, which grant the licensee the right to use biological materials accessed from NIH. These arrangements are "licenses" (not "sales"), and specimens remain in federal ownership (precisely because they are "licenses to use" and not a "sale").
-"Camo"

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: Jan Leitschuh <janl2 at mindspring.com> 

> 
> 
> National Park Service To Allow Commercial Bioprospecting 
> Public Interest Groups Oppose Commercialization of Parks 
> By: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility 
> Published: Oct 4, 2006 
> 
> 
> 
> The National Park Service (NPS) has unveiled its plans to allow commercial 
> bioprospecting in the National Parks. Under the plan, the Park Service will 
> allow private corporations to extract and make money from organisms taken from 
> the national parks, including millions of acres of wilderness areas. 
> 
> The term that NPS uses to describe the new commercial arrangements is 
> "Benefits-Sharing." The document NPS put out for comment, technically called a 
> Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), follows a seven-year-old court 
> order obtained by public interest advocates opposed to the "commercialization of 
> the commons" forcing NPS to do an environmental review leading to the DEIS first 
> published on September 22, 2006. 
> 
> "This is, sadly, another step along the path of turning our national treasures 
> into corporate booty," said Beth Burrows, Director of the Edmonds Institute 
> (EI), one of the plaintiffs in the original lawsuit over this matter. "We 
> support scientific research in the parks, but we are against commercializing the 
> parks and their wildlife." 
> 
> More at :http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_43259.shtml 
> 
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