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Category: WIPO

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Folklife at the International Level: the Roots of Intangible Cultural Heritage Part II, with Valdimar Tr. Hafstein

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

In the last post, the Folklife at the International Level series took a turn into the world of “intangible cultural heritage” (ICH), a category of heritage on the global stage that developed decades ago, thanks to the joint efforts of WIPO and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). As noted, since the …

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Folklife at the International Level: The Roots of Intangible Cultural Heritage Part I

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

Exploring how legal measures, particularly intellectual property (IP) protections, can be used to safeguard living cultural traditions, practices, and expressions has been a longstanding aim of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), as discussed so far in this series. Yet, there exists another international organization that has for several decades taken on similar questions of …

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Folklife at the International Level: Recent Developments in Protecting Traditional Cultural Expressions

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

  Yet another World Intellectual Property Day has arrived, and what better way to celebrate than to catch up with related developments on the folklife front? So far, this series has explored the international efforts of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in protecting traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) as intellectual property (IP) via IP protections. …

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Folklife at the International Level: Issues in Protecting Traditional Cultural Expressions

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

In the last “Folklife at the International Level” post, Wend Wendland, Director of WIPO’s Traditional Knowledge Division, recounted that the Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC) was formed by WIPO member states in 2000. The aim was to discuss issues relating to the protection of TCEs (called at …

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Folklife at the International Level: Traditional Cultural Expressions as Intellectual Property

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

In the first of the “Folklife at the International Level” series, I ended with a glimpse into the complex issues that arise when intellectual property (IP) protection is sought for “traditional cultural expressions,” or “TCEs,” the terminology used by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). On its website, WIPO describes such expressions as including “music, …

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Folklife at the International Level: World Intellectual Property Day

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The following is a guest post by AFC Folklife Specialist Michelle Stefano.   I recently began researching the history of the American Folklife Center’s engagement with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and its efforts in protecting intellectual property (IP) and promoting its importance at international and national levels. Over the past 15 years, AFC …