Dimensions: 6'' x 9'' 300 pages World Bank Publication Date: February 2004 Paperback ISBN: 0821354876

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June 2004
Poor People's Knowledge: Promoting Intellectual Property in Developing Countries
Edited by J. Michael Finger and Philip Schuler

How can we help poor people to earn more from their knowledge, rather than from their sweat and muscle alone? This volume looks into that question from the perspective of building the institutions needed to make poor people's own intellectual property a functioning part of their economies. It analyzes cases such as the African music industry, traditional crafts and ways to prevent counterfeit crafts designs, bioprospecting and the commercialization of ethno-botanical knowledge; draws lessons from such cases; and provides an overview of the lessons learned from the projects analyzed in the book.

J. Michael Finger is a resident scholar at AEI. Philip Schuler works for the Development Research Group of the World Bank.

Commerce and Culture

Most of the cases in the book involve poor people in the "modern world." One case, however, looks at a "traditional group"--the Yekuana people, who live in the tropical forests of the Amazon and the Orinoco Basins. Though the region they inhabit is remote, the Yekuana have experienced major incursions of modern society, some associated with attempts to exploit natural resources through large-scale mining and rubber plantations. With these incursions came the threat of takeover of their land.

The Venezuelan constitution recognizes traditional property rights, but those who would claim them must put together the necessary information and apply for the ownership documents that we in the "modern world" take for granted. In 1993, with technical support recruited by the Asociacion OTRO FUTURO, the Yekuana started a program to identify and mark the land that was by tradition theirs, so that they could apply for formal deeds of ownership. From their oral history, the Yekuana identified their borders and marked them with stakes and stones. The written transcript of the relevant parts of their history became the basis for their application for deeds of ownership.

A parallel effort put together an archive of Yekuana visual images, crafts, medical knowledge, and related items. These archives provide a necessary base for claiming copyrights, trademarks, and patents on this knowledge. The Yekuana organized themselves into a corporate unit, a legal "person" in whom ownership can be vested. With their property identified and recorded and their legal existence established, the Yekuana have entered into a contract with a U.S. company to explore and develop the commercial value of some of their knowledge, particularly their medical knowledge.

The initial motivation behind the project was as much social as economic--to preserve Yekuana folkways and culture. The main lesson from this experience is that creating a record of the Yekuana's property that will serve them in their dealings with the modern world was accomplished in a way that strengthened, rather than weakened, indigenous culture. Culture and commerce were found to complement rather than to conflict. The case study confirmed that the momentum of the interface between the traditional world and the modern is toward the latter, but the Yekuana experience demonstrates that, creatively managed, the dynamic of the indigenous culture can be maintained.

Handicrafts

Handicrafts in India provide a modest livelihood to large numbers of poor people. Currently, about ten million people earn some $4 billion (USD) a year from such work--until recently, more than India earned from computer software.

Maureen Liebl grew up in the United States and now lives in India. Her passion is Indian art and handicrafts: weaving, jewelry, embroidery furniture, and dolls. Her particular expertise is in adapting the skills and products of Indian artisans to new market conditions.

In applying this expertise Ms. Liebl is a realist. Commercial realities do not paint an optimistic picture for all artisans. Take, for example, weavers of everyday garments. In the past, wrapped, unstitched cloth was the basic mode of dress throughout the country. (The woman's sari and the man's dhoti are the same piece of cloth, draped differently.) The local weaver was thus an important member of the community, and his economic well-being was assured. Many women today prefer the brilliant chemical colors, novel synthetic texture, and low price of machine-made saris, and many are shifting to tailored clothing. Throughout India, women still prefer saris for formal and ritual occasions, and there will always be a market for the exclusive (and often expensive) high-end woven saris. But the livelihood of the multitude of local weavers has disappeared.

Upscale markets offer more optimistic examples; one is the designer Ritu Kumar. In the 1970s, Ms. Kumar revived a traditional form of embroidery done with silver and gold wire to create fine evening and bridal outfits. In time she expanded into other traditional crafts, including other forms of embroidery, mirror work, and hand-blocked prints. At first she incorporated these into traditional Indian outfits, but she has since moved into fusion and Western clothing, as well as into accessories and home decoratives. Today, Ritu Kumar has boutiques throughout India, as well as in London, and she is an international presence. She has been the inspiration and model for a new generation of designers who see traditional craft skills as the foundation for a contemporary Indian design aesthetic.

The absence of formal intellectual property rights in an economy often means that innovation is skewed toward the high end of the market. The Ghanaian Kente artist Gilbert "Bobbo" Ahiagble suffered early in his career from unauthorized copies of his designs, but as his artistry developed he realized that his identity is his protection against copies. He uses unique labels to distinguish his creations, and his status is such that all of his weavings are produced and sold to special order. Any buyer in the secondary market can consult his records on questions of authenticity.

An important lesson that emerged from the studies of crafts production is the importance of entrepreneurs who are value driven and accept the market. Ms. Liebl is an example. She regrets that Indian village weavers are disappearing, but she accepts that the consumer has spoken. Except in a museum setting, Ms. Liebl told us, no traditional craft skill can live on unless it has a viable market. A second lesson is that the lack of enforcement of intellectual property rights in the domestic economy orients creative activity toward foreign markets where such protection is available or toward the high end of the home market.

African Music

African music has significant business potential. It currently makes up about half of the fast-growing "world music" segment of recorded music, and music industry experts suggest that African music today may be at the jumping-off-point where country music and rock and roll were in the United States in the 1950s.

This book's analysis of the economic potential of African music began with a series of meetings held in Dakar, Senegal, with local musicians. "What are your problems," we asked, "and what do you see as solutions with which we might help?"

The musicians came forward with a long list of complaints. Here are two of the many listed in the book:

• Piracy of local music is rampant. Cassettes sold locally are quickly counterfeited, and radio stations play the music without paying royalties.
• Pirates have more resources at their disposal and better connections with influential politicians than do the people responsible for enforcing intellectual property laws. "Big fish eat little fish" is how Africans describe the economic structure of the music industry, and it is an accurate description.

Finding a place to start in such a situation is difficult. When we investigated the problem of pirated cassettes being sold on the street, we learned that the pirates were not "little guys" who bought a cassette and then went to make copies on a cheap machine. The owner of the recording studio, where the band went to record its song and have 250 cassettes made, kept a master tape. If the song turned out to be popular, he made copies for himself and put his salespeople out on the street hawking them.

We were lucky to find in the local Senegal Musicians' Association a president who was both dynamic and honest, Mr. Aziz Dieng. The association already had on its drawing board a sensible plan to attack these problems. We signed on to help.

The government, aware of a 30,000-member organization now active on the local scene, became supportive. (What politician could be opposed to 30,000 votes, or to music?) Spurred by the government's interest and by the activities of the Musicians' Association, the copyright enforcement society has become more dynamic. It has taken legal action to force radio stations to pay royalties; it has also initiated a system to combat local piracy by applying difficult-to-counterfeit stickers to cassettes and disks on which royalties have been paid. The sticker system will help to identify counterfeit products; its success of course depends on the rigor of the police and the courts to enforce the law. No small amount of credit here should go to Ms. Sibyl Schlatter, an intellectual property lawyer who has helped the Musicians Association put the fear of the law behind the enforcement society.

Many local musicians we found were unaware that there are laws to combat piracy; they did not know how to use the laws, and they did not have the resources to engage lawyers to represent them. The Ford Foundation has picked up on the need to educate local musicians as to their rights under Senegalese copyright law, to provide legal and business education for local musicians, and to provide them with templates for performance contracts.

Not all the stories have a happy ending. In the 1960s, Accra, Ghana, was the Nashville of West African Music, replete with recording studios, record-pressing plants, twenty big-time pop music bands, dozens of smaller groups, and an evolving form of entertainment called "concert parties" that musicologists describe as a form of participatory comic opera. Today there is no music industry in Ghana. The government, at the advice of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), created a National Folklore Board of Trustees, ostensibly to register and to protect African folklore. It extended its reach to the evolving popular music scene; it taxed and regulated the music business out of existence. In the well-intentioned cases we reviewed, efforts to protect culture seemed often to presume that it is something static, a stock rather than a changing flow of ideas and expressions. Put culture in a bottle and save it? We learned that culture in a bottle soon loses its vitality.

The overall lesson of the book is that dynamic people equipped with normal legal and commercial tools can get things done. There are volumes of scholarly legal treatises on novel ways to protect poor people's knowledge. Our experience finds little need for novelty. What works is diligent application of tried and proven legal and commercial tools.

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