Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights

Reviews / Votes

This kaleidoscopic collection explores legal strategies for defending the artistic and technological creations of indigenous peoples from misuse by outsiders. Each chapter illuminates a different facet of the problem. Together they offer fresh and urgently needed insight into one of the most vexing human-rights problems of the digital age. A superb addition to the required reading list of courses on globalization, intellectual property, and indigenous rights. -- Michael F. Brown, Williams College, author of Who Owns Native Culture? This book covers much of the enormous range of concerns Native peoples have today about appropriation and alienation of their cultural property and rights. . . . A good source for surveying the breadth of the IPR discourse today. -- Tom Greaves, Bucknell University The Convention on Biological Diversity is now ten years old, and more than a dozen years have passed since Darrell Posey called our attention to the possibility of intellectual property as a tool to benefit indigenous people. In this short time, indigenous people, governments, international agencies, conservationists, and human rights activists have explored different means to achieve the CBD's goal of recognizing the contributions of indigenous people to understanding, utilizing, and conserving biological diversity. We have expanded our search for equitable and effective means to protect a range of traditional knowledge. Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights reflects the broadening and maturing of scholarship about issues surrounding the protection of indigenous knowledge. Although medicinal and other plant knowledge remains central, this book shows that many more types of knowledge are now considered. Most importantly, the essays in Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights provide excellentexamples of how anthropologists and other scholars and activists have confronted the obstacles to such an ambitious agenda. As the world increasingly turns to legal mechanisms to protect people who have been marginalized and exploited for so long, this b -- Stephen B. Brush, University of California, Davis Each chapter demystifies indigenous intellectual property rights and explains why existing laws (attached to Western concepts and contructs) do not legally protect them. More importantly, the authors present actual cases that were resolved with respect to indigenous rights and consideration of their cultural values, beliefs and tradition...There are sufficient examples to assist in finding answers and defining solutions for a wide range of important concerns. * Muse * Dr. Mary Riley has edited an extremely timely and indispensable book for understanding the myriad issues impinging upon indigenous intellectual property rights. The legal protection of these intellectual achievements and the ability to control their dissemination by indigenous communities is a problem facing the world's legal and intellectual communities. In a world with a global economy and where local borders are ignored, indigenous property rights are constantly violated and exploited. The challenge is guidance from creative solutions and innovative programs to involve the people whose prior control is ignored. This thoughtful volume is a wonderful textbook for anthropology, business, and legal courses to enable students to propose solutions to local problems that defy easy answers for preserving indigenous knowledge and protecting economic interests of powerless communities. -- Richard I. Ford, University of Michigan The Convention on Biological Diversity is now ten years old, and more than a dozen years have passed since Darrell Posey called our attention to the possibility of intellectual property as a tool to benefit indigenous people. In this short time, indigenous people, governments, international agencies, conservationists, and human rights activists have explored different means to achieve the CBD's goal of recognizing the contributions of indigenous people to understanding, utilizing, and conserving biological diversity. We have expanded our search for equitable and effective means to protect a range of traditional knowledge. Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights reflects the broadening and maturing of scholarship about issues surrounding the protection of indigenous knowledge. Although medicinal and other plant knowledge remains central, this book shows that many more types of knowledge are now considered. Most importantly, the essays in Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights provide excellent examples of how anthropologists and other scholars and activists have confronted the obstacles to such an ambitious agenda. As the world increasingly turns to legal mechanisms to protect people who have been marginalized and exploited for so long, this book will stand as a milestone and beacon. -- Stephen B. Brush, University of California, Davis