ABSTRACT

This chapter seeks to reflect on the Traditional Knowledge and Folklore's (IGC's) work and its future from the perspective of its significance and implications for World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and more broadly for the global intellectual property system. It argues that the traditional knowledge 'conundrum' is the biggest policy and normative challenge that WIPO has ever faced and that the future of the global intellectual property system hinges upon its satisfactory resolution. To understand the magnitude of this challenge, it is important to situate the IGC process in the context of WIPO's history and longer term institutional development. The way the debate in the IGC has evolved is emblematic of this. It progressed from being about how measures could be taken in the patent system to prevent it from misappropriating GRs and associated traditional knowledge (TK) to being about how TK can be protected through an intellectual property (IP)-like system and become the subject of exclusive rights.