Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Programme


The Hoodia Plant, containing intellectual
property belonging to the San, was acquired
and patented without their permission

context

There are 100,000 San living in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Angola.

They are the indigenous people of Southern Africa, and remain one the region’s most impoverished and marginalised populations.

For thousands of years the San have been sustained in their journeys across the Kalahari Desert by the Hoodia plant, which contains a naturally occurring appetite suppressant.

This commercially valuable quality was patented without the San’s permission in 1995. The San challenged the patent-holders, forcing an acknowledgement of their IPR in the patent.

The San agreed to distribute revenue gained from this IPR amongst all the San, regardless of whether they live in a Hoodia-growing region or not. The revenue will be distributed by the San Hoodia Trust, formed for this purpose.

A Protimos Legal Team proposes to advance its work in partnership with the San, the indigenous peoples of Southern Africa, to ensure that IPR in the Hoodia plant belonging to the San are asserted and protected by law, thus securing a substantial and sustainable income for their future.

our work


The San remain one of the most
impoverished groups in
Southern Africa

In recent years, Protimos has worked with the San’s lawyer Roger Chennells, and a number of the NGOs and civil society organisations representing the San peoples. Protimos has carried out a number of scoping studies, preliminary research concerning the Hoodia plant, and legal capacity building workshops with the San.

The project has three main components:

  1. Legal Assistance:
    The Protimos Legal Team, our International Legal Groups and Protimos 500 will provide co-ordinated international legal assistance to the San to assist them in protecting their IPR, flowing from the Hoodia plant internationally.
  2. Legal Capacity Building:
    The Protimos Legal Team, together with our local partners, will:
    1. Run focused workshops with San communities to build their capacity to protect their IPR;
    2. Source funds to send two San to law school, and train and mentor these local lawyers during the project;
    3. Assist the South African San Institute (‘SASI’) and the San’s lawyer to establish a San Intellectual Property Centre. This will institutionalise the San’s knowledge regarding IPR, and ensure that the San’s unique heritage survives for generations to come;
    4. Build up the legal capacity of the San Hoodia Trust, formed in order to share equally among all San the revenue from the agreements made regarding Hoodia.
  3. Designing a Protocol:
    Protimos will coordinate negotiations and the design of a protocol to govern relations between different stakeholders relating to ‘free, prior and informed consent’ (‘FPIC’).