Caribbean IP- Protecting Traditional Knowledge
While there is much preoccupation with the issues of copyright law in the Caribbean which is centered around trade and commerce, the lesser known issues of traditional knowledge in Intellectual Property are hardly considered to be of especial significance to the majority of policy makers, and except for a few pockets of interest groups such as a group of Rastafarians in Jamaica the average citizen is uninformed on the subject. The importance of traditional knowledge and the preservation of entitlement to retain the rights to commercial and other exploitation are of some importance to Caribbean countries as our histories are quite recent, dating settlement by Europeans and others to the fifteenth century and later, and contain a rich legacy of traditions in many areas which resulted from an amalgamation of various cultures; or which may have remained within the grasp of particular cultural enclaves. The Amerindian nations have histories in the region which predate settlement by other cu...