0.8 Traditional knowledge  (Page 7/24)

Uganda's   Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act, 2006  grants copyright protection to "work in the field of literature, traditional folklore and knowledge, science and art" (Article 5). It grants performers -- persons who act, sing, deliver, declaim, play in, interpret, or otherwise perform literary or artistic works or expressions of folklore -- the right to control the fixation, transmission and reproduction of their performances (Articles 2 and 22).

A final group of countries protect TCEs by granting rights to the State for its protection. Included in this group are  Egypt, Jordan, Malawi, Saudi Arabia, Sudan,  and  Qatar .

For instance, in  Sudan ,  Article 7  of the Copyright Act notes that "National folklore of the Sudanese community is deemed to be the property of the State" and that the "State represented by the Ministry of Culture and Information, shall endeavor to protect works of folklore by all legal ways and means, and shall exercise the rights of an author in cases of mutilation, transformation and commercial exploitation." Similarly, in  Egypt ,  Article 142 of the Law on the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights No. 82 (3 June 2002) defines "national folklore" as part of the "public domain of the people." The act states, "The competent ministry shall exercise the author’s economic and moral rights and shall protect and support such folklore." In  Saudi Arabia ,  Article 7  of the Copyright Law of 2003 states that "[f]olklore shall be the property of the state, and the Ministry shall exercise the copyright pertaining thereto," and that "[t]he import or distribution of copies of folklore works, copies of their translations or others which are produced outside the Kingdom without a license from the Ministry shall be prohibited." Likewise, in  Qatar , Article 32 of the Copyright Act of 2002 provides that "[n]ational folklore shall be the public property of the State" and that "the State...shall protect national folklore by all legal means, and shall act as the author of folklore works in facing any deformation, modification or commercial exploitation." In  Jordan ,  Article 7(c)(3)  of the Copyright Law No. 22 of 1992 excludes from copyright protection "works which reverted to the public domain. For the purpose of this article folklore shall be considered in the public domain with the minister exercising the copyrights of these works against distortion, misrepresentation or damage to cultural interests" unless "the collections of these works were distinguished by a personal effort involving innovation or arrangement."

Countries with sui generis traditional knowledge laws

The countries discussed in the previous section include traditional knowledge in their regular copyright laws, but typically treat TK somewhat differently from other types of copyrighted works. The members of the final group of countries go one step further. Instead of classifying TK as a (special) type of copyrighted work, these countries have adopted so-called  sui generis  laws that create an entirely different sort of legal protection for TK. (As we will see, the distinction between customized copyright laws and sui generis laws is blurry, but is nevertheless helpful in differentiating the types of approaches to this issue.)