What happens when resources get valuable and scarce? How
is Intellectual Property dealing with market failures related to
sub-patentable innovation or purely traditional knowledge with
interesting applications? The protection of traditional knowledge
and genetic resources (TKGR) has been one of the major modern
challenges in international IP law. The entry into force of the
Convention on Biological Diversity and its implementation in
national legislation has created more questions than the ones it
answered.
This dissertation evaluates proposed remedies to the TKGR market
failure and implementation initiatives by using Coase’s Theorem
and Rawls’ theory of justice. Apart from presenting and elaborating
on alternative forms of entitlement, the dissertation supports
a thorough procedure in the introduction of a new entitlement
for TKGR, that could also be used in other situations where
complicated market failures are in seek of a remedy inside or at the
periphery of the IP system.