ABSTRACT
The recognition of rights over well-known plants such as guarana is highly problematical. Even if Brazil has created a legal regime that protects the rights of indigenous peoples, it fails to recognize the contribution of the Sateré-Mawé people in domesticating guarana, discovering its properties, and perpetuating its genetic diversity. This chapter explores the bundle of rights which apply to guarana and set a situation combining open access, public prerogatives and private rights. It shows how the Sateré-Mawé nevertheless seek to recover the plant to a certain extent by building a common property regime which justifies the specificity of ‘their’ guarana among ‘other’ guaranas.
