Geographical Indication (GI) options for Ethiopian Coffee and Ghanaian Cocoa

Innovation & Intellectual Property
Policy approaches are needed that can enhance ILCs’ control over commercialisation
and exploitation of their TK and restore ILCs’ confidence in the communal
spirit of TK-sharing. It is this author’s view that legal policy instruments should seek
to enhance communal approaches to TK protection and management, via enabling
environments for documentation and value enhancement practices that can ensure
the perpetuity and dynamism of ILCs’ TK. One such approach would be to support
formalisation of TK “commons” structures – structures whereby commonly held
TK is shared and preserved within an ILC in a manner guided by an agreed instrument
giving a measure of formality and enforceability to the ILC’s TK commons.
Among the elements of the potential dynamism of TK that this author is concerned
with is the potential for TK – when governed according to TK commons
principles – to increasingly make information available to third parties for purposes
not only of commercialisation and benefit-sharing, but also broader collaboration
for socio-economic development – a collaborative developmental dynamic that has
begun to be conceptualised in the development literature as “open development”
(Smith et al., 2011). The open development concept views networked, collaborative
relationships – often enabled by information and communication technology
(ICT) platforms – as integral to sustainable socio-economic development.
This chapter outlines the findings from a Kenyan research study into the degree
to which Kenyan TK commons modalities are effectively catered for by existing
international and Kenyan national legal and policy mechanisms. The study was
premised on the assumption, grounded in the open development concept, that
it is necessary to have a legal and policy environment for TK that can balance
TK custodians’ complex mix of social and economic needs (knowledge-sharing
and preservation, knowledge protection, controlled knowledge exploitation and
benefit-sharing) while at the same time fostering increased dynamism within the
custodians’ already-implicit TK commons – dynamism whereby TK-based creativity,
innovation and open development can be optimised by the TK holders.
Among the contemporary commons-based approaches to TK are ICT-based
efforts to digitally document TK in a manner that enhances preservation and
equitable exploitation while at the same time encouraging follow-on innovation.
In India, for instance, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)
has developed a digital database, the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library
(TKDL), which captures information on India’s existing TK. The information in
the TKDL is used, among other things, by patent offices to verify applications
based on Indian TK, especially in the area of pharmaceuticals. 2 This database
model is currently under investigation by Kenyan government agencies.
2 For more information on India’s TKDL, see Council of Scientific and Industrial Research
(CSIR) (n.d.).
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