State Protection for Traditional Crafts

A new drive to patent traditional crafts and practices in Kyrgyzstan won’t provide much protection from international business sharks, although it should help bring some clarity to the way technological innovations come onto the market.



Kyrgyzstan’s Agency for Intellectual Property Rights unveiled a draft law on traditional knowledge at an international seminar in Slovakia on August 5. According to the law’s developers, it will shortly be submitted to parliament.



If the law is enacted, it should have a positive effect on intellectual property rights, in spite of the fact that licensing traditional knowledge is quite a controversial concept both within the country and internationally.



As a rule, businesses in developed countries commercialise traditional knowledge taken from developing nations. For example, oriental medicine based largely on Chinese healing, as well as Indian handicrafts and health remedies, are available all over the world, while the people who create unique technologies reap none of the benefits.



The protection of traditional crafts and knowledge is provoking a spirited global dialogue these days.



If Kyrgyzstan’s draft law is adopted, it will not be sufficient to bring pressure to bear on international business, but it will help identify those areas that are worth preserving and protecting, and could eventually prompt initiatives for new international laws on intellectual property.



The lawmakers themselves acknowledge that it is impossible to patent folk crafts within a country. A patent is, in effect, a monopoly given to one person who has filed a claim of having invented something. According to the bill, new products created on the basis of folk crafts can be patented, provided the item is an improvement on the original, and as long as the patent application states which traditional crafts were used and what the author’s own invention is.



Experts say the state should create a special fund attached to the Agency for Intellectual Property Rights to tabulate and distribute the profits. In addition to businessmen, profits would need to be divided among traditional craftsmen. For example, if someone undertakes industrial production of Kyrgyz yurts, he would share the profits with the fund, which would turn pass money on to the felt-makers and others involved in the process.



Such funds should also be set up at community level, say analysts. These local funds would have the right to set conditions for the commercial exploitation of their crafts, as well as determine profit shares and so on.



Analysts predict that the bill will have many opponents. Businessmen already using traditional crafts in their industries will be reluctant to share the profits.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)