INTERNATIONAL / INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY / "TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE"

According to Professor Michael Blakeney, writing in the European Intellectual Property Review, Vol 22 Issue 6, June 2000, under the heading The Protection of Traditional Knowledge under Intellectual Property Law, "the expression ‘traditional knowledge’ accommodates the concerns of those observers who criticise the narrowness of ‘folklore". However," he adds, "it significantly changes the discourse. Folklore was typically discussed in copyright or copyright-plus terms. Traditional knowledge would be broad enough to embrace traditional knowledge of plants and animals in medical treatments and as food." This could have the effect of shifting the emphasis to patents and related subjects. The author examines a number of different ways in which traditional knowledge could be protected. Given that traditional knowledge includes biological diversity, there is much to be said for the idea, which might have been debated in the abortive WTO conference in Seattle, that the Convention on Biological Diversity should be imported into the TRIPS Agreement. [20015]