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A Framework for Managing Disputes Over Intellectual Property Rights in Traditional Knowledge
Major controversies in moral and political theory concern the rights, if any, Indigenous peoples should have over their traditional knowledge. Many scholars, including me, have tackled these controversies. This Article addresses a highly important practical issue: Can we come up with a solid framework for resolving disputes over actual or proposed intellectual property rights in traditional knowledge? Yes, we can. The framework suggested here starts with a preliminary distinction between control rights and income rights. It then moves to four categories that help to understand disputes: nature of the traditional knowledge under dispute; dynamics between named parties to disputes; unnamed Indigenous claimants; and the various normative systems (for example, custom, U.N. documents, treaties, statutes, administrative regulations) within which disputes are decided. Throughout, examples that inform the framework come principally from Indigenous peoples in the Pacific rim. Lastly the Article tests the framework against some disputes over traditional knowledge in Samoa and New Zealand. This framework is comprehensive and sensitive to context. It is flexible regarding which normative systems are best suited to settling disputes. A test run shows that the framework helps to resolve practical legal issues.Online Student Notes: Africana Legal Studies
Professor Angi Porter’s article from Volume 27.2, Africana Legal Studies: A New Theoretical Approach to Law & Protocol, introduces an innovative interdisciplinary approach to studying the stories of Law and African people. In her words, the work of African Legal Studies “centers the humanity and self-defined thoughts and actions of…The Protocol of Caste: Identifying Caste on the Continent and its Utility in Africana Legal Studies
Bhaavya Sinha, Georgetown University I. Introduction In his treatise surveying global history, Hegel wrote that Africa “is no historical part of the world; it has no movement or development to exhibit.”[1] For centuries, as it pillaged and erased other cultures, the European states – influenced by Western philosophy…Protocol vs. Law in the Sea Islands: Gullah/Geechee Land Use and Land Loss through an Africana Legal Studies Lens
Gianfranco Cesareo, Georgetown University Introduction The Gullah/Geechee are the only African American population in the United States with a longstanding name demarcating them as separate people.[1] Descendants of enslaved Africans forcibly brought to the Sea Islands to cultivate rice, indigo, and cotton plantations of European colonists,[2]…Environmental Maafa: Challenging the Colonial Roots of Western Conservation Efforts in Africa
Grace Gibson, Georgetown University I. INTRODUCTION Environmental protection and conservation are virtually universally viewed as positive measures that make the world and the lives of people better. The relationship between international conservation efforts and worldwide Indigenous movements has been characterized as a “good guy vs. good guy story”; both groups…Africana Legal Linguistics
Patricia Murphy-Geiss, Georgetown University Introduction Modern African systems of governance exist in the context of culturally diverse and multilingual societies. Despite this, most African law is written in Western languages. For example, the Angolan and Cabo Verdean constitutions are written in Portuguese; the Burkinabé, Central African Republic, and Chadian constitutions…A Long View of History into the Protocols of Traditional African Societies
Adedola Adefowoju, Georgetown University A Long View of History into the Protocols of Traditional African Societies I. Introduction According to Yoruba folklore, humanity began in a Yoruba city known as Ile-Ife.[1] The first king of Ile-Ife (Oòni of Ife) was believed to be Oduduwa, the creator of…
Unequal Protection in Jury Convictions
By: Madelyn Hughes Associate Editor Vol. 27 The Constitution establishes the right for those charged with a crime to have a trial by an impartial jury comprised of their peers.[i] As the United States reckons with the history of racism and discrimination that colors many of the systems…
The Disconnect in Vacatur Laws, Human Trafficking, and Race
By Shawntel Williams Associate Editor, Vol. 27 Survivors of human trafficking who have criminal records stemming from their victimization have some redress in vacatur laws. These laws allow victims of human trafficking the chance to start anew with a clean slate by expunging their arrests and convictions. Well, that is…American Informant
Part of my childhood was spent in Baghdad, Iraq, during the rule of Saddam Hussein. At that time, the regime offered free and universal education and healthcare. Literacy rates in the country surpassed much of the Arabic-speaking world and, indeed, the Global South. As the celebrated Egyptian intellectual, Taha Hussein, famously put it: “Cairo writes; Beirut prints; and Baghdad reads.” Booksellers were everywhere in Baghdad. Its people read voraciously and passionately debated literature, poetry, and a range of other subjects. But what struck me, even as a child, was the absence of sustained talk about politics in bookshops, markets, and other public spaces. I knew that adults could not stay away from the topic of politics in more intimate, private settings, where a deeper level of trust usually reigned. Once you entered the public sphere, however, discretion about politics—and especially local politics—clearly became the better part of valor. Iraqi society had been so thoroughly infiltrated by elements of Hussein’s intelligence services that ordinary people knew to tread with extreme caution. After all, the person standing within earshot at a bustling Baghdad market, overhearing your conversation—or maybe even your direct interlocutor— could be an informant. And the stakes were high: incarceration, torture, or death. That was an early introduction to the valency of informants—their capacity to interact with the society that surrounds them and their distorting effect on it. The lesson has colored my subsequent work on surveillance, including this reflection on the contemporary role of informants in the United States.