Gibson, Johanna --- "Knowledge and Other Values – Intellectual Property and the Limitations for Traditional Knowledge" [2007] ELECD 283; in Westkamp, Guido (ed), "Emerging Issues in Intellectual Property" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007)

Book Title: Emerging Issues in Intellectual Property

Editor(s): Westkamp, Guido

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845427757

Section: Chapter 14

Section Title: Knowledge and Other Values – Intellectual Property and the Limitations for Traditional Knowledge

Author(s): Gibson, Johanna

Number of pages: 10

Extract:

14. Knowledge and other values ­
Intellectual property and the
limitations for traditional knowledge
Johanna Gibson
Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed
in order to be valorized in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange.
Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself, it loses its `use-value.'1



INTRODUCTION
The international enthusiasm for achieving a framework not only for the
protection but also, implicitly, for the commodification and understanding of
traditional knowledge, has been channelled largely through intellectual prop-
erty perspectives. As distinct from what are arguably diverse community
perspectives upon the generation and exchange of such knowledge, intellec-
tual property frameworks confine traditional knowledge systems to a posses-
sory and individualistic rendering of culture as property, as commodities.
Importantly, however, this potential conflict with intellectual property models
does not justify dismissing the types of `ownership' at work within communal
models. Indeed, it is necessary to acknowledge the way in which that `owner-
ship', or that personal relationship to knowledge, is achieved through tradi-
tional systems of development, access, and incremental change. This chapter
will consider this relationship between value generation and knowledge
commodities. What is the value at stake in the protection of traditional knowl-
edge? And what is the value generated by the application of intellectual prop-
erty frameworks?




1 Lyotard, J-F (1984) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, G.
Bennington and B. Massumi (trans), Minneapolis, U of Minnesota P: 4­5.

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