Cupuassu (Theobroma grandiflorum ), a tree from the same family as cacao, the seed of which is a source of food in the Amazon, is at the center of a controversy involving non-governmental organizations (NGOs), producers from Acre, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), the Itamaraty( The Brazilian Foreign Relations Ministry) and the Japanese giant, Asahi Foods Co Ltd.

It all began when an NGO that supports local producers in marketing byproducts of cupuassu, like jams and sweets, Amazonlink, was preparing to sign a sale contract with a company in Germany at the end of last year. "Then, when understandings were being reached, they told us that the deal would only be concluded if the name 'cupuassu' did not appear on the product, since cupuassu had been registered as a trademark in the European Union by Asahi Foods, since last year," says Michael F. Schmidleher, Amazonlink's president. The same Japanese company, it was later found out, had likewise registered cupuassu as a trademark in the United States and in Japan.

A more detailed investigation revealed that Asahi Foods had also patented the method for extracting oil and fat from the seed and the process for producing 'cupulate', a kind of chocolate prepared from the fruit, in Japan and the European Union, between the months of October 2001 and July 2002. In 1998, the use of cupuassu extract in the composition of cosmetics had already been registered by Body Shop International. The Japanese company's patent, though, may show similarity with another one, lodged by Embrapa with the National Institute for Industrial Property (INPI) in 1990, relating to the "Process for obtaining semi-bitter cupulate in powder and in tablets with white milk using cupuassu seeds."

The story became public at the beginning of this year, raising suspicions that Brazil continues exposed to acts of biopiracy, despite the protective measures provided for in Provisional Measure No. 2186 - 16 ( a provisional measure is an act decreed by the executive that goes in effect immediately; the measure goes to Congress which analyzes its contents and approves or not), on the access to genetic heritage and the traditional knowledge associated to it.

"It is important for this case of cupuassu to call attention to the larger problem of biopiracy," says Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva. The ministry, she adds, is directing the creation of an inter-ministerial and inter-institutional work group to analyze the registration of trademarks and the lodging of patents for cupuassu. This group, she says, is going to harness "efforts and knowledge in the fields of agronomic and genetic research, of intellectual property and protecting diffuse and collective rights and interests," as well as international cooperation.

The minister also intends to speed up the approval of measures to protect biodiversity. When she was a senator, she was the author of a bill to regulate access to genetic heritage, already approved by the Senate in 1998, but still at a standstill in the Chamber of Deputies. "In 2000, there came the Provisional Measure of the previous government, prompted by the negative repercussion of the contract entered into between the social organization Bioamazônia and a foreign company from the pharmaceutical sector, in the first half of that year," she says.

Now, in command of the ministry, Marina Silva has plans to broaden the composition of the Council for the Management of the Genetic Heritage (Cgen), created by the Provisional Measure, to include representatives of scientific entities, the civil society, indigenous and local communities. The idea is that all of them together may propose to Congress a way for converting the Provisional Measure into law. Another idea that is being studied is to unfile the bills on the subject that are still with the Chamber of Deputies, to produce a substitute bill based on consensus, and to submit the new version to the approval of Congress.