ABSTRACT
The multilateral intellectual property protection framework, as exemplified by TRIPS, has been constructed to best deliver the protection on those intellectual property rights that the major players – the developed countries – have sought to have protected. The multilateral framework is given further substance by the network of TRIPS-plus treaties and bilateral agreements, in which the same developed countries figure prominently. The dominant characteristic of this framework is that, to be protectable as intellectual property, a right must be private in nature, identifiable, ascribable and commercially exploitable. Issues or rights which do not fit within this framework – notably traditional knowledge and cultural heritage in the broadest sense – enjoy little, if any, of the protection offered by TRIPS, the TRIPS-plus treaties and the bilateral agreements. The absence of protection on an international mutually agreed scale for these issues has witnessed them subject to potential and actual encroachment by the multilateral protection framework on terms dictated by that framework. In essence, they suffer a TRIPS-minus protection environment.
