The Public Domain and Legal Protection of Traditional Knowledge, Traditional Cultural Expressions and Genetic Resources

IKS stakeholders often debate the divide between indigenous and other knowledge systems. IP rightsholders seek advice on how they can strengthen and secure their proprietary rights or broaden the public domain, while other interest groups such as indigenous peoples and local communities want to know how the public domain can be enclosed. One reason for this divide seems to be that the IP regime operates in a sphere where the public domain is demarcated by individual rights, as opposed to the indigenous knowledge systems regime where the public domain is demarcated by social embeddedness and connected to the land on which indigenous peoples and local communities live. This problem manifested itself over centuries of colonialism and technological development worldwide, but also because indigenous worldviews do not share the pre-appropriation narrative of the public domain than technological advanced societies. Within the context of this narrative the research question was posed, namely "what are the appropriate legal instruments for protecting Indigenous Knowledge Systems without compromising the public domain?"