Intellectual Property and Traditional Cultural Expressions in a Digital Environment

In the face of increasing globalisation, and a collision between global communication systems and local traditions, this book offers innovative trans-disciplinary analyses of the value of traditional cultural expressions (TCE) and suggests appropriate protection mechanisms for them. It combines approaches from history, philosophy, anthropology, sociology and law, and charts previously untravelled paths for developing new policy tools and legal designs that go beyond conventional copyright models. Its authors extend their reflections to a consideration of the specific features of the digital environment, which, despite enhancing the risks of misappropriation of traditional knowledge and creativity, may equally offer new opportunities for revitalising indigenous peoples' values and provide for the sustainability of TCE.This book will appeal to scholars interested in multidisciplinary analyses of the fragmentation of international law in the field of intellectual property and traditional cultural expressions. It will also be valuable reading for those working on broader governance and human rights issues.

Academic cooperation to foster research and advocacy competences in the occupied Palestinian territory (West Bank)

Palestinians living in the West Bank, a territory occupied by the State of Israel according to International Law, face deprived access to land and a limited ability to move freely which pertains to the presence of Israeli settlements and other infrastructure (closures, restricted or forbidden roads, etc.). This confinement has significant impacts on their economic and social livelihoods, and it is even worsening with the on-going construction of a 709 km long Barrier which mainly runs inside the West Bank. With regard to this situation, there is a clear need to strengthen the capacity of civil society and its representatives to apply sound research processes as a basis for improved advocacy for Palestinian human rights. Monitoring processes and tools are needed to assess the impacts of the Palestinians’ confinement, particularly in relation to the Barrier’s construction. Reliable data has also to be collected, managed, and above all, shared. These challenges have been addressed within the Academic Cooperation Palestine Project (ACPP) that brings together academic partners from the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) West Bank (WB), and Switzerland as well as other international academic institutions and Palestinian governmental and non-governmental agencies. ACPP started in early 2011 and is designed as a large cooperation networking platform involving researchers, students, public servants and experts from the oPt WB. A large set of actions have already been developed during the first year of the project, including courses, training, and research actions. First relevant results and impacts of the different actions are presented in this paper. Taken as a whole, the project produces valuable results for all partners: useful advocacy material for the Palestinian partners, and a unique “real-scale laboratory” where investigations are jointly conducted to develop novel confinement and change indicators.

Rezension zu: Inge Govaere and Hanns Ulrich (eds.): Intellectual Property, Public Policy and International Trade

The contemporary intellectual property rights (IPR) system is not a simple, smoothly working block of rules but is complex and full of ambiguities, and as many argue, imperfections. Some deficits relate on the one hand to the inherent centrality of authorship, originality and mercantilism to the ‘Western’ IP model, which leaves numerous non-Western, collaborative or folkloric modes of production outside the scope of protection. On the other hand, some imperfections stem from the way IPR are granted, whereby creators acquire a temporary monopoly over their works and thus exclude the public from having access to them. In this sense, it is often uncertain whether the existent IPR model appropriately reflects the precarious balance between private and public interests, and whether the best incentives to promote creativity and innovation - the initially stated objectives of intellectual property protection - are offered. The matter becomes still more complicated when one considers that the IPR system is not domestically contained but is globalised and strongly affected by rules at the regional and international levels. The question of whether the balance between private interests and public values is sustained within the international legal framework, epitomised by the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), is precisely the topic of the book reviewed here. Review of Intellectual Property, Public Policy, and International Trade, edited by Inge Govaere and Hanns Ullrich, P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2007.

Trade Governance in the Digital Age (Preface)

The development of new digital technologies has resulted in significant transformations in daily life, from the arrival of online shopping to more fundamental changes in the ways we work and communicate. Many of these changes raise questions that transcend market access and liberalisation and demand cooperation and coherent regulatory design. International trade regulation has hitherto not reacted in a forward-looking manner to the digital revolution; particularly at the multilateral level, legal engineering has yielded few tangible results. This book examines whether WTO laws possess the necessary flexibility and resilience to accommodate the changes brought about by burgeoning digital trade. By revealing both the potential and the limitations of the WTO framework, it provides a broad picture of the interaction between digital technologies and trade regulation, links the often disconnected discourses of international trade law, intellectual property and cyberlaw, and explores discrete problems in different domains of global trade regulation.

Intellectual Property and Traditional Cultural Expressions in a Digital Environment. Preface

In the face of increasing globalisation, there is a pressing need for innovative trans-disciplinary analyses of the value of traditional cultural expressions (TCE) that also suggest appropriate protection mechanisms for them. The book to which this preface belongs combines approaches from history, philosophy, anthropology, sociology and law, and charts previously untravelled paths for developing new policy tools and legal designs that go beyond conventional copyright models. It reflects also upon the specific features of the digital environment, which, despite enhancing the risks of misappropriation of traditional knowledge and creativity, may equally offer some opportunities for revitalising indigenous peoples' values and provide for the sustainability of TCE.

Human rights and international trade

Economic globalization and respect for human rights are both highly topical issues. In theory, more trade should increase economic welfare and protection of human rights should ensure individual dignity. Both fields of law protect certain freedoms: economic development should lead to higher human rights standards, and UN embargoes are used to secure compliance with human rights agreements. However the interaction between trade liberalisation and human rights protection is complex, and recently, tension has arisen between these two areas. Do WTO obligations covering intellectual property prevent governments from implementing their human rights obligations, including rights to food or health? Is it fair to accord the benefits of trade subject to a clean human rights record? This book first examines the theoretical framework of the interaction between the disciplines of international trade law and human rights. It builds upon the well-known debate between Professor Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann, who construes trade obligations as human rights, and Professor Philip Alston, who warns of a merger and acquisition of human rights by trade law. From this starting point, further chapters explore the differing legal matrices of the two fields and examine how cooperation between them might be improved, both in international law-making and institutions,in dispute settlement. The interaction between trade and human rights is then explored through seven case studies:freedom of expression and competition law; IP protection and health; agricultural trade and the right to food; trade restrictions on conflict WHO convention on tobacco control; and, finally, human rights conditionalities in preferential trade schemes.