Protection of traditional knowledge: Deliberations from a transnational stakeholder dialogue between pharmaceutical companies and civil society organizations

This report summarizes deliberations over the Protection of Traditional Knowledge held during a stakeholder dialogue process launched by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) in 2001/2002. The dialogue process was designed to explore options of companies to address contested issues of intellectual property in their business strategies. To that end, companies were exposed to the concerns of stakeholders and urged to define responses to these concerns. The project involved major companies and transnational nongovernmental organizations as well as renowned experts in the field of intellectual property rights. This paper briefly sketches the project and the process of the Dialogue. The products of the process are the opinions, both concurring and dissenting, that the participants reached on the Protection of Traditional Knowledge, subsumed in the final report to the WBCSD that emerged from the project. This paper also reviews documents (Circulars) from the proceedings, which further illustrate the dynamics of the deliberations, and the range and direction of arguments exchanged by the participants.