Protection builds trust with Indigenous communities, which is key to research and knowledge sharing.

The relationship between intellectual property law, secrecy, and disclosure has important consequences for the traditional knowledge debate. In the traditional knowledge context too, society as a whole benefits from the disclosure of commercially valuable information. If bark from a tree and a shaman's knowledge of its special properties can cure ulcers, then society has an interest in encouraging the disclosure of this knowledge to other entities that can improve upon it and bring it to the larger public.

At least some anecdotal evidence suggests that traditional knowledge holders are willing to share otherwise secret information with outsiders for research and commercial purposes, so long as they are afforded a degree of control over subsequent uses of the knowledge and, in some cases, a portion of the benefit. For example, traditional healers from indigenous communities in Uganda reported to WIPO IGC field researchers that they would be "willing to collaborate with modem health practitioners and the pharmaceutical industry to share information," but that "[p]rotective measures should be in place before [they] would be willing to collaborate with outsiders." 247

Evidence also suggests that in the absence of protection, traditional knowledge holders are warier of sharing and, in some cases, will go to great lengths to erect walls around potentially valuable information. A number of traditional knowledge holders interviewed during the course of the WIPO IGC's nine fact-finding missions expressed an unwillingness to share their traditional knowledge out of fear that they would not have any control over the way the information was used or derive any economic benefits. Members of the Kuna community in Panama, for example, expressed their aversion toward collaborating with ethnobotanists or other scientists:

Expeditions by [these researchers] have started to be regarded with suspicion because community members are not involved in, nor informed of, the subsequent use of the information and biological material supplied by them. It is believed that if new products were to be developed or new scientific publications issued on the basis of that information, the communities of origin would probably never be informed and would in all likelihood not participate in any economic benefits deriving therefrom.248

Some local and indigenous groups have taken more drastic steps to prevent the flow of information to outsiders. In 2000, a Wapishana indigenous community in the Guyanese Amazon banned all "researchers" from entering their villages.249 This community had previously shared valuable medicinal information with a British chemist about the healing powers of certain plants Tipir, the nut of the Greenheart tree, and Cunani, a bush plant-used since ancient times. The chemist subsequently obtained U.S. and European patents based on the active ingredients in these plants, which he claimed were useful in treating malaria and preventing heart blockages. The community viewed the incident as a betrayal of their sharing.250 In response, they have banned the research efforts of all outsiders-to the potential detriment of society. Thus, even if an initial transmission of information-like the chemist's initial acquisition of knowledge-can occur in the absence of traditional knowledge protection, the erosion of trust from such a one-sided transaction can pollute future transmissions.251

To be sure, formal law's role in lessening distrust may operate differently in the commercial context than in the traditional knowledge context, depending on the level of social or cultural significance that such knowledge may have for a particular community or the community's level of wariness toward outsiders. Information sharing in the traditional knowledge context may require greater indicia of respect or trustworthiness than the arms-length commercial licensing transactions that govern information sharing for modem firms. As Rosemary Coombe writes, "Acquiring traditional knowledge . . . may require rather different forms of social relationship that involve trust [and] collaboration," as well as a showing of "respect that our intellectual property laws . . . do little to encourage."252

Here, too, a fair amount of variation is likely to exist among and between groups. But what is striking about the data collected by the WIPO IGC is that a number of traditional knowledge holders have voiced a greater willingness to share knowledge and collaborate upon receiving internationally recognized IP rights. And experimental projects such as Ecociencia's closed-access registry of botanical knowledge suggest trade secret law's potential for eliciting hitherto unknown and undisclosed traditional knowledge and encouraging its categorization, classification, and storage in forms that can be more easily shared with outsiders. 253

Even outside of the traditional knowledge context, the effects of formal law on trust and behavior are difficult to measure in any absolute terms; its role is often "modest but [nonetheless] important." 254 As Dagan and Heller observe: The myriad details of the law do not matter individually, but jointly they produce practices and experiences that in turn generate social expectations. For law to affect behavior, we do not assume widespread knowledge of any doctrinal detail, only that people generally believe that if things turn ugly, the law will serve as one form of social organization that protects them against extreme abuse and exploitation. 255

Thus, while the evidence may be limited, there are both logical and evidentiary reasons to suggest that without legal protection, traditional knowledge holders would disclose less and take more assertive steps to prevent the flow of information to outsiders. This is problematic for a number of reasons, including that it will "slow the process of commercialization and improvement of' relatively secret knowledge and ultimately interfere with "both the invention and disclosure functions of IP law." 256 For example, researchers might be prevented from entering these communities at all, or even if they did enter, traditional knowledge holders might be unwilling to share information that could lead to the next antimalarial or heart medicine.