“Protection” means enforcement of IP exclusivity
Dagne 14, LL.B; LL.M; JSD; Assistant Professor of Law, Thompson Rivers University Faculty of Law, Kamloops, BC. (Tesh, 2014, ARTICLE: PROTECTING TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE IN INTERNATIONAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW: IMPERATIVES FOR PROTECTION AND CHOICE OF MODALITIES, 14 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 25, 30, Lexis accessed online via KU libraries)
The word "protection" often creates confusion as it means very different things in strict intellectual property law and in ordinary usage. "Protection" in intellectual property is usually perceived as a means enforcing private, exclusive economic rights to a specific creation in order to prevent others from using or reproducing it. "Protection" of TK, on the other hand, implies protecting the whole social, ecological, cultural and spiritual context of that knowledge so that it continues to be produced and reproduced.