Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies » Volume 15, Number 2

Patents and Traditional Medicine: Digital Capture, Creative Legal Interventions, and the Dialectics of Knowledge Transformation

oneditor — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 22:43:14 +0000

This article examines the debate over the exclusion of indigenous or local knowledge forms from the global intellectual property system, and some of the current attempts to solve this problem. Using the lens of cultural cosmopolitanism, the article highlights important trends in the dialectics of developing countries’ engagement with intellectual property and other collateral knowledge protection systems. The three sites at which this significant development is unfolding are: (1) the digitization of traditional medicinal knowledge through India’s traditional knowledge digital library (TKDL) project; (2) a recent attempt at incorporating innovations in Chinese Herbal Medicine (CHM) in Taiwanese patent law; and (3) efforts to enshrine disclosure of origin requirements (DRs) in patent applications, and developments around geographical indications (GIs).

Toward a World Migratory Regime

oneditor — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 22:38:44 +0000

Increasing transnationalism challenges the predominant statist treatment of migration and citizenship. Global, indeed cosmopolitan, citizenship offers an alternative to open border policies and global migratory management that focuses on the extent to which political agents are free to move and join different societies. Multilayered citizenship and multileveled political membership encourages a supranational institution dedicated to global deliberation. Such a migratory regulatory system and new admission criteria developed under the universal membership regime ensure the grant of civil, social, and political rights to all migrants.

Globalization and Housing Rights

oneditor — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 22:35:20 +0000

This article seeks to explore the relationship between the growing phenomenon of globalization and the field of housing rights. I begin with a general description of globalization, and move on to discuss its effect on homelessness, and on housing systems across the world. I examine the role of global corporations; the globalization of housing finance and real estate investment; the reordering of cities and slums; the idea of the minimalist state; and the effects of privatization. I examine the rise of governance networks and how they have created new patterns of making law; globalization’s effect on housing policy; and its effects on the movement of people. Next I look to the idea of housing rights and some specific instances of their development through the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the European Union. These rights may offer the possibility of mediating the excesses of neo-liberal globalization and promote social equality and inclusion. I conclude with a call to reconsider traditional liberal legal models and housing-as-property regimes, and recommend the legal concept of the “home” may be a more appropriate base model for housing rights in a globalizing world.