The patent system can be reformed to protect traditional knowledge---criticizing the system absent material action is ineffective

The race for patents on biodiversity and bio cultural knowledge is a contemporary "gold rush," with devastating consequences for the ecosystem and local bio cultural communities. The alignment of global forces does not allow for a decrease in the scope of the patent system. Nor are justified outrage and indignation against the excesses of the patent system likely to yield more than marginal moral victories. The more effective approach may be to undermine the ethos of the contemporary patent systems by operating from within the international patent system itself.

This objective is achievable if the patent system is applied creatively to address the needs of peoples genuinely committed to the sustenance and conservation of biological diversity for the benefit of the entire world.9' Communal patents give scope for blocking the issuance of future patents on biological diversity and also afford weak local communities a stronger basis for the negotiation of terms for access and benefit sharing. Providers of bio cultural knowledge deserve to have the right to determine when, where, and how their bio cultural knowledge is used.92

A five-pronged strategy may be used to achieve this goal. First, a registry of uses should be created, detailing indigenous knowledge practices, innovations, and bio cultural knowledge. Second, this registry should provide the basis for the issuance of community patents under CIPR legislation. Community patents may be issued without examinations. Competing claims may be resolved by local and inexpensive arbitration. Third, a public officer with the status of a public defender of Community patents should be created with competence to track down, on a global scale, cases of appropriation of indigenous knowledge and to make necessary international representations. Fourth, the Public Defender of Community Patents should establish a Gene Tracking Database for rare genes occurring within the boundaries of the biological diversity in the local communities. Fifth, the concept of environmental self-determination should be revisited. As Richard Falk has rightly pointed out, indigenous peoples often constitute "'captive nations' caught within the confines of. . .juristic entities often established and maintained by coercion, not consent .... ,9 Multicultural states should seriously consider maintaining a plurality of regimes on ownership and protection of bio cultural knowledge. The time to act is now.