The Ayahuasca Patent and After: Biopiracy in the Psychedelic Economy

“The 2003 cancellation of the ayahuasca vine patent established that prior indigenous art can defeat pharmaceutical patents on traditional plant knowledge. The psychedelic patent race since 2020 has reopened the same contest.”

In 1986, the USPTO granted US Patent 5,751,559 to Loren Miller for a variety of Banisteriopsis caapi, the ayahuasca vine. The Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin challenged the patent. After a decade of proceedings, the patent was cancelled in 2003: prior art existed in the ethnobotanical literature documenting indigenous use, and Miller's claimed variety was not sufficiently distinct from existing varieties.

The Narby argument, that the sacred cannot be sold and that appropriation of indigenous knowledge for commercial benefit without consent is a form of black magic, found legal expression in this case.

The psychedelic patent race since 2020 presents harder cases. A psilocybin developer has patented specific crystal polymorphs of synthetic psilocybin, not the compound itself (long off patent) but specific forms its manufacturing process produces. This is legal. It does not involve any indigenous knowledge claim. But it creates intellectual property over specific formulations of a compound used by indigenous communities for millennia.

The Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-Sharing, ratified by 138 countries as of 2024, creates an international legal framework requiring benefit-sharing with communities of origin. Implementation and enforcement have been weak.

Narby's argument, that the sacred is not for sale, is a moral claim the legal system has partially incorporated and partially ignored. The biopiracy contest the ayahuasca patent exemplifies is ongoing.

Sources

• Narby The Cosmic Serpent (1998)
• WIPO IGC (2024)
• Olson et al. Trends Pharmacol. Sci. (2022) [Source not found; under review]