<TITLE: Global Challenges of eDevelopment Conference 2
ACADEMIC DOMAIN: technology
DISCIPLINE: information sciences
EVENT TYPE: conference presentation
FILE ID: CPRE08I
NOTES: continued in CDIS08B, session also includes presentations CPRE08L/P (CDIS08A and CPRE08A-F/H are part of the same conference)

RECORDING DURATION: 11 min 50 sec

RECORDING DATE: 15.3.2005

NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: circa 30

NUMBER OF SPEAKERS: 1

S22: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Greek; ACADEMIC ROLE: junior staff; GENDER: female; AGE: unknown>


<S22> so first of all maybe not everyone is familiar with traditional knowledge so what is traditional knowledge there is not one agreed definition of traditional knowledge there are many definitions so first of all maybe one wide definition of traditional knowledge this is a WIPO definition , the WIPO define traditional knowledge as referring to tradition-based literary artistic or scientific work performances inventions scientific discoveries designs marks names and symbols and disclosed information and all other tradition-based innovations and creations resulting from intellectual activity in the industrial scientific literary and artistic fields so as you can see here there are many things in that definition you have on the one hand some technical things for example you have innovations you have scientific works and then you have some more artistic things like performances or er literary or artistic creations so i like i said this is a very wide definition and from here you can see that you can distinguish TK erm in the narrow sense as being the more the substance of the knowledge and then you can have the expression of the knowledge which which is what they called er traditional cultural expressions so now if we look at TK in a narrow sense in the context of the convention of biological diversity it has been defined as a body of knowledge built by a group of people through generations living in close contact with nature and this includes a system of classification a set of empirical observations about the local environment and a system of self-management that governs researchers so we can use this definition as our working definition today now what are the characteristics of traditional knowledge well first of all it is collective in nature which means that is owned by a community then it's passed on from generation to generation er thirdly er there's a geographical dimension about it because very often it's linked about this with a specific community that is located in a specific geographical place then it's part of the cultural identity of indigenous and local communities which means that they use it in their daily life and it's very erm closely linked to the way they live and they relate to to their environment erm it forms part of a holistic world view there again you have the community the geographical place the the knowledge everything is linked together and finally there's a practical component to traditional knowledge because very often it has been created as a response to the needs of everyday life , now what are the objectives of protection erm what it is that erm traditional community wants er to achieve by protecting traditional knowledge with intellectual property rights well first of all there is positive protection erm they want to have the right to to to benefit from their traditional knowledge to seek remedies against er misuse of traditional knowledge and to get positive intellectual property rights then you have nev- negative protection whidi- which is to to to safeguard their knowledge against illegitimate er intellectual property rights taken by other people by third parties on their traditional knowledge so if we look at these objectives a bit more closely for the positive protection objective you have four main sets of rights that they would like you have the promotion of equitable bene- equitable beneficiary for example if erm you have collaboration with maybe some foreign societies about the way the knowledge is going to be used then these people want to get some commercial advantage of erm the use of this knowledge then er you have repression of missasa- misappropriation of traditional knowledge and other unfair and inequitable views then they want their creativity and innovation to be protected in some kind of way and finally they want the value of the TK to be protected and they want it to be respected and acknowledged as such as having a specific value finally in the negative protection objective it's mainly preventing third parties as i said from obtaining I-P rights over TK but here again even if they do er get this negative protection er it's preventing people from getting intellectual property rights but other people could still use traditional knowledge without having intellectual property rights so even if they achieve that it's not always very efficient , okay so now well it's very nice to talk about the objectives but can er traditional knowledge be protected by intellectual property rights or not when you talk about I-P you have the classical intellectual property rights you have patents you have copyrights you have trademarks geographical indications et cetera but there's nothing about traditional knowledge as such so is it possible to protect it well yes if you look at the the WIPO er one of the WIPO definitions in the 1967 convention establishing WIPO it says that er intellectual property is not confined to the specific and non-categories of intellectual property such as inventions literary artistic and scientic-fic works trademarks and other categories listed in that definition which means there is not a numerus clausus of intellectual property rights and there's still room for new intellectual property rights (which is) good news for traditional knowledge holders , and now if you want to protect erm traditional knowledge with intellectual property rights how how are we going to do that so er as we heard in a presentation just before there have been talks erm in different er international fora about protecting TK that's in WIPO in the WTO in the con- the mhm CBD about the CBD they've talked about protecting TK but they haven't reached an agreement at the international level so there's no international protection for TK at the moment but in national laws there have been many efforts er to protect TK and erm mainly the ways to do so is either by protecting traditional knowledge as such in existing intellectual property laws and legal systems well that's not extremely efficient because in doing so you're only going to protect some aspects of er TK the ones that fit in the existing intellectual property laws er and as i said before some of the characteristics of traditional knowledge make it impossible to fully protect them with erm intellectual property laws as they are now because for example there is erm the aspect that er traditional knowledge is communal in nature and intellectual property rights mainly protect erm well erm not communal rights i mean it's l- you have one creator who gets the rights so it's a bit difficult with these aspects and then there's the duration because traditional knowledge holders would want er to see their rights protected for a very long period of time and intellectual property rights don't work like that you get a right for a limited period of time and that's how it works so then you can get protection er with extended or adapted intellectual proj- property rights which would solve some of the problems and then you also have the option of creating a new sui generis system that is specifically for intelle- for TK so you protect it with the with the characteristics that you want to give and then you have other non-intellectual property options also that er it's worth to mention for example you can protect traditional knowledge er with contracts you can protect with customary laws erm and then you have also remedies that are based on torts and unjust enrichment so now the most interesting part of this whole discussion is what are the stakes of protecting traditional knowledge erm for the public interest for the traditional knowledge holders is it in their interest to protect traditional knowledge or not so i have identified four main stakes first of all we have the survival of the knowledge erm well what would happen if er traditional knowledge was protected would this help erm the knowledge to survive well in recent years erm you have a couple of external factors such as mig- migration you have modern lifestyles erm you have social and environmental pressures that make that erm the survival of the traditional knowledge is at risk so maybe some people think that protecting it erm would maybe bring some benefits er to traditional knowledge holders which would er help them wants to to to continue to live with their traditional knowledge and er not to forget it in a way then you have the economic value of traditional knowledge erm well there's there's no more discussion about that i mean traditional knowledge definitely has an important economic value so the stakes of protecting it would be in relation of er well getting protection against misuse erm being able to give prior informed consents erm about the use of traditional knowledge and of course erm beneficiaries so for traditional knowledge holders protecting it would definitely be important then you have er the uncertainty erm of people doing research working with research and development erm because they don't know whether who they have to ask permission er for using the traditional knowledge erm what's going to happen it's very there's a very unclear situation for them and finally there's and most importantly i would say there is the status of traditional knowledge should it be disclosed or should it ush- or not i mean if traditional knowledge is disclosed then erm it's possible for for everyone to benefit from it i mean it is definitely in the public interest on the other hand if erm traditional knowledge is not protected then there is going to be a tendency for it to be hidden er traditional knowledge holders won't want to share it with other people which is definitely against the public interest so maybe it would be a good thing to give protection to traditional knowledge so that's the debate so i don't know what you think about it maybe we could start the discussion here if you have any questions </S22>
