0.8 Traditional knowledge  (Page 22/24)

System of domain public payant

The doctrine of domain public payant, advocated by the  Tunis Model Law  and discussed at WIPO's 1999 Round Table on IP and TK  (section 3 b of the Round Table minutes) , advocates payment of royalties for works, including TCEs, that are in the public domain because they do not qualify for protection under traditional intellectual property law. This would provide monetary compensation for indigenous communities, but would not be a satisfactory solution for communities whose priority is control over their TCEs rather than remuneration. For more on different versions of domain public payant, see the UNESCO Copyright Bulletin from 1994.

Why not protect tk?

Some observers think that legal protection for traditional knowledge is highly problematic. Here are some of their arguments:

TK does not map onto IP law easily . As indicated above, traditional cultural expressions are often not put into a fixed form, are not "original," and do not have a defined author -- three requirements for copyright protection. Furthermore, as indicated above, most expressions of folklore are not used in commerce as a means of identifying their source, and so would not be eligible for trademark protection. Finally, patent law may not be available to protect TK because by definition, TK has been used and passed down through generations, and this type of prior public use may preclude patent protection, as least if it is publicly recorded. Thus, it appears that certain attributes of TK make it a difficult fit with all three of the major types of intellectual property law. Additionally, protection for TK does not fit well with the principal goals underlying the protection of intellectual property law. There is little evidence that protection of TK is necessary to incentivize the creation of cultural expression, as other factors have successfully motivated the creation of these expressions for millennia. Furthermore, the labor-desert theory does not easily fit with TK protection, as those who created the traditional expression are either unidentifiable because the expression was the product of collaboration, or in some cases, long dead. Current members of the culture do not have as strong a claim for protection from a labor-desert perspective.

Protection of TK would involve perpetuation of illiberal social hierarchies and oppressive customs within indigenous groups. Another argument against providing protection for TK is that doing so may perpetuate inequality and oppression within indigenous groups. When an indigenous group is given the right to control the use of TK, the powerful members of that indigenous group may benefit at the expense of the group's minorities. Paul Kuruk argues that protection of TK may further the oppression of women and subordinated social and economic groups within an indigenous culture.

Protection of TK may deprive the world community of valuable knowledge. Some might argue that principles of liberal democracy dictate that knowledge should be freely shared rather than restricted to certain people or groups. Protection of TK might deprive outsiders of a chance to benefit from the traditions, medicinal or otherwise, of an indigenous culture. When advancing this argument, however, one should keep in mind that principles of liberal democracy, while widely accepted in the Western world, are not necessarily an agreed-upon starting point for this debate.