intellectual property rights

Copyright and patents legislation has spread rapidly over the past century. This has a particular impact on indigenous women and the holders of traditional knowledge, as copyright ignores the possibility that knowledge can be held communally and has definitions of knowledge that exclude information held in a spiritual context. In this article, GenderIT writer Sonia Randhawa examines how women's…

The future female leaders of Africa are up against major barriers to knowledge access, which could mean lost opportunities in university learning and teaching the state-of-the-art research most necessary for academic success. Online academic journals, and university textbooks are a few of the important resources that are part of this access to knowledge, which is pertinent particularly at the…

The UNAIDS 2008 report confirms that Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be the region most seriously affected by AIDS in the world. As part of the response to this pandemic, access to information and knowledge on HIV/AIDS is vital, as disease prevention depends heavily on information. In a world where there is a price to pay for access to knowledge, to what extent do patents and copyrights limit…

The different forms of online violence against women should be covered by criminal legislation to provide adequate protection and redress. However, laws are not enough. There is also a need for education, prevention, the development of defence mechanisms and a legal system that is capable of addressing these issues without subjecting the victims to further victimisation. Carlos Gregorio, a…

How can a health care system respond to the gender-specificities in terms of providing accurate and timely information…

The idea of the 'commons' has been contestedly understood as being both a principle of understanding content and creative products, and a community that supports the sharing of information and creative content. It is also directly linked with subverting current Intellectual Property Rights paradigms, where ownership and control of information, knowledge, and content has been commodified. So what…

The African Copyright…

Articles on intellectual property rights in Africa have been brought together by the International Environmental Law Research Centre. The site includes papers translated from Arabic, and topics covered include traditional knowledge, farmers rights, patents and comparisons between intellectual property regimes in different parts of Africa.

This paper examines the discussion on intellectual property rights (IP) for traditional knowledge (TK) in medicine from a gender perspective. It argues that a gender analysis of these issues adds to the understanding of how trade decisions can have important and unintended impacts on the lives of disempowered people.

The paper outlines the risk and liability issues related to use of the Internet and suggests risk-management guidelines to protect organizations from liability.