Intellectual Property, Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Property Protection: cultural signifiers in the Caribbean and the Americas

1. Popular/traditional cultural signifiers in the Caribbean and the Americas -- 2. Protecting cultural signifiers as intellectual property -- 3. Protecting cultural signifiers as traditional knowledge -- 4. Protecting cultural signifiers as cultural property --5. Reclaiming collective knowledge through group rights to cultural signifiers : a theoretical framework.

International developments since the mid-1990s have signalled an awareness of the importance and validity of traditional knowledge and cultural property. The adoption of the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the establishment of the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore demonstrate an emerging trend towards the recognition of the rights of communities and the importance of culture in shaping international law and policy.This book examines how developments to protect collectively held knowledge transpose to circ