Sui Generis Rights for the Protection of Traditional Cultural Expressions

Within the international communitythere have been many calls for better protection oftraditional cultural expressions (TCEs), for which clas-sic instruments of intellectual property rights do notseem to fit. In response, at least five model laws havebeen advanced within the last 40 years. These are re-ferred to as sui generis because, though they gener-ally belong to the realm of intellectual property theystructurally depart from classic copyright law to ac-commodate the needs of the holders of TCEs. Thepurpose of this paper is to provide a well-foundedbasis for national policy makers who wish to imple-ment protection for TCEs within their country. This isachieved by systematically comparing and evaluatingeconomic effects that can be expected to result fromthese regulatory alternatives and a related system orprivate ordering. Specifically, we compare if and howprotection preferences of local communities are metas well as the social costs that are likely to arise fromthe different model laws