Cross-Cultural Sui Generis protects local knowledge and avoids pitfalls and deception of current IPR system

I have underscored the reservations about the ability of conventional intellectual property rights, especially patents, to foster indigenous interests and aspirations. In relation to traditional knowledge of plantbased therapy (TKPT), intellectual property rights, especially the patent regime, is not a reliable mechanism to facilitate the attainment of a number of expectations. A few of those expectations include the preservation of the cultural integrity of indigenous knowledge and by extension the indigenous quest for self-determination, the notion of medical pluralism, and not the least of all biodiversity conservation. By way of conclusion, this chapter explores how some of these objectives can best be attained. It does not endorse the outright discarding of Western intellectual property models or their sui generis constructs; rather, here I identify with a cross-cultural approach in the search for a sui generis scheme for local knowledge protection. Such a scheme should be based on the provision of legal cover for traditional knowledge in a manner that draws from customary protocols or traditional regimes for the protection of knowledge. An effective international protective regime for indigenous knowledge, which does not compromise its epistemic foundation and cultural integrity, should not ignore how knowledge has been protected in indigenous communities. For too long we have proceeded as if mainstream intellectual property is the only mechanism for knowledge protection. However, the crisis of legitimacy in the intellectual property system demands a template shift to a cross-cultural approach to knowledge protection. My aim is to point to a direction. The detail of how to get to a destination is secondary to knowing the destination. I am concerned here with drawing attention to the template shift in intellectual property discourse, examining and articulating how that shift is proceeding. The cross-cultural approach is without doubt in need of details, the exploration of which is outside the scope of this book. Those details will continue to evolve as the shift gains momentum. Indeed, the exploration of the cross-cultural project, including its practical details, is one of the pivotal items in the intellectual property discourse and in the quest for the protection of indigenous knowledge and peoples in the twenty-first century. We are right at the dawn of what promises to be an exciting conversation in the intellectual property arena.