Intellectual Property and Community Rights: Humane Approach to Protect Culture
- NLR Journal
- Mar 29
- 1 min read
By Pranav Anand Ojha, Assistant Professor at School of Law,
VIT-AP University, Andhra Pradesh.
Abstract
Community rights not only shape the culture of a community but assist in building a nation’s heritage. A local or indigenous community is built upon the knowledge passed through generations. It has been preserving and contributing knowledge to society as a whole. It thus makes complete sense to protect these community rights from being misappropriated. Unfortunately, the world is becoming technologically advanced every passing day. With such growth and development, imitations, copying, piracy and theft have also become common. And this became all the more possible because of the lack of proper documentation and laws safeguarding community rights. The international community hence thought of including community rights as a facet of intellectual property law. And organisations like WIPO and UNESCO came up with solutions. But the fact remains intellectual property law has its defined sets of features in which community rights seldom fit. Moreover, international organisations like WIPO and UNESCO have different sets of objectives and have not been able to define traditional knowledge or community rights clearly. This paper is an attempt to highlight this fragmentation of community rights at the international level and suggest ways to tackle the same.
Keywords: Community Rights, Misappropriation, Intellectual Property Law, Culture, Local Knowledge.
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