ISSUES RELATING TO PUBLIC DOMAIN STATUS OF TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND TRADITIONAL CULTURAL EXPRESSIONS

Abstract

An increase in emphasis on the need to safeguard the ‘public domain’ is recognized at the international level as more exclusivities are taken particularly in the form of intellectual property rights. Two parallel international developments set the discourse of the issue of ‘public domain’ and ‘access’; the Convention on Biological Diversity 1992 and the TRIPS Agreement of 1994. The former has the mandate of the common responsibility of countries to conserve and sustainably utilize biological diversity and the latter made intellectual property (IP) a tradable good. While the TRIPS agreement brought in IP as a global obligation for its member countries, the Convention on Biological diversity gave impetus to conservation as a global commitment. The scope of public domain considerations gained attention under the fore of WIPO’s commitment to reach a mechanism for strengthening a cause for traditional knowledge (TK) and traditional cultural expressions (TCEs). The introduction of the voluntary fund for indigenous community participation and expansion of the work programme under the aegis of the intergovernmental committee on genetic resources and TK are important standpoints in the international developments relevant to TK.