South Africa

South Africa has enacted a new intellectual property law to protect traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expression, according to a report in IT in Government. The law is seeking to extend traditional IP laws to protect indigenous knowledge, and South Africa will establish registries under which indigenous communities can register creative works and also receive licensing fees. However, Owen Dean, chairman of intellectual property law at the University of Stellenbosch, said IP law cannot protect traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expression because "'all IP is based on a policy which says you want to encourage creativity, so you give creators an incentive: exclusive control for a limited period, before the work becomes public domain. Indigenous knowledge is reversed: nothing is identifiably creative, and rights are awarded perpetually,'" IT in Government further reported.

Protecting traditional knowledge from appropriation by others is a problem around the world. Earlier this year, South Africa launched a registry for traditional knowledge that is passed down orally. South Africa's The Southern Times reports: "'One of the aims is to try to make those communities that hold this traditional knowledge, part of the mainstream economy. An important feature of the system is that it immediately allows access to information about the geographical location of the traditional knowledge owners. This is important as it increases the efficiency of prior art research. The system will also provide prior art information for intellectual property offices for patent applications examination purposes."'