Protecting Indigenous Knowledge as Intellectual Property Rights through the Entrenchment of Indigenous Customary Law and Communities Rights in National Constitutions

Abstract

One of the burning issues of academic debate is how best to protect the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) of indigenous groups, who under the current IPR regime have little or no protection. The essence of this paper is to find a possible solution to this academic puzzle by examining the “entrenchment of indigenous customary law and communities rights in national constitutions” to unlock the difficulty created by the western styled IPRs regimes in protecting the intellectual rights of indigenous peoples. This paper is intended to espouse how national constitutions have entrenched traditional knowledge, indigenous customary law and communities rights as part of their provisions to guard against violations and ensure that benefits from IPR are accruable to the groups or communities that owe these rights or indigenous knowledge over generations.