Traditional Knowledge, Cultural Expression, and the Siren's Call of Property

Abstract

This paper was presented at a symposium at the University of San Diego in 2012. After providing a brief historical review of international efforts to establish intellectual property rights over "traditional knowledge" (TK) and "traditional cultural expression" (TCE), the paper explores different possible justifications for establishing such protection. The paper concludes that incentives for preservation, privacy, personality justifications, and redistributive justice concerns may each provide some underpinning for limited, properly calibrated protection of TK and TCE.

Keywords: folklore, traditional knowledge, traditional cultural expression, copyright, intellectual property, Rawls, Locke, Sen