ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the public domain in the Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC) context, and describes the debate over the nature of the public domain that has beleaguered intellectual property scholarship and that now threatens the IGC. In the current Draft Articles for traditional knowledge (TK), insertions of the public domain appear principally as efforts to curtail the scope of TK that could be subject to entitlement claims asserted by resource holders. Competing views of the public domain remain a root cause of the complexity and underlying tension surrounding efforts at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to develop an international legal framework for the protection of genetic resources (GRs), TK, and traditional cultural expressions (TCEs). To carve out meaningful space for a rights-based international framework for GRs, TKs and TCEs, the undifferentiated notion of the public domain currently deployed in the IGC needs to be disciplined.
