Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights: a time to debate

There is so much I could say with the title...and perhaps some of you may think that as an IP academic/practitioner/ or just in the business of IP we see the sometimes lack of protection but also, sometimes the overprotection of different works by IPRs.

When we talk about Indigenous rights in IP we could link it to almost of everything we know in the IP sector: copyright, patents, design, trade marks. Indigenous have such a greater culture that we need to protect, not just as any other IPR and looking at the economic justification of it, but I believe that goes more into a moral justification. In this regards, I received an invitation from Dr Alexandra Xanthaki,a minority and indigenous rights expert, for the following workshop/conference, which you are also invited:

Brunel Law School in collaboration with the UN Expert Mechanism on Indigenous Issues is organising an Expert Workshop on Indigenous Languages and Cultures at Brunel University on the 8th-9th March 2012. The Workshop aims to contribute to the Annual Report of the Expert Mechanism, which will be on this same topic.

One of the themes that are included apart from the understandable topic of human rights would be: traditional knowledge, traditional cultural expressions and intellectual property rights.

Any resemblance to the pane is purely coincidental

The solid panellist is jaw dropping, including my cyber friend Prof. Graham Dutfield (University of Leeds), a specialist in Intellectual Property Law. Others members of the panel are:

• Elsa Stamatopoulou (Former Chief of the Secretariat of Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues)
• Prof. Julian Burger (Former Chief of UN Minority and Indigenous Unit, currently Essex University)
• Prof. Siegfried Wiessner (St Thomas Law School, US)
• Prof. Rene Kuppe (University of Wien)
• Dr Federico Lenzerini (Sienna University)
• Prof. Samson (Essex University)
• Prof. Paul Havenmann (Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London)
• Dr. Robert Dunbar (University of Aberdeen)
• Dr. Damien Short (Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London)
• Prof. Joshua Castellino (Head of Department, Middlesex University)
• Dr. Marilena Alivizatou (UCL)
• Prof. Sonia Harris-Short (University of Birmingham)
• Dr. Susan Aikmann (University of East Anglia)
• Dr Ghanea-Hercock (Oxford)
• Prof. Marie-Benedicte Denbour (University of Sussex)
• Dr. Kristin Hausler (British Institute of International and Comparative Law)

If you would like to attend please email Dr Alexandra Xanthaki at alexandra.xanthaki@brunel.ac.uk.