Book Review

Professor Toshiyuki Kono, Faculty of Law, Kyushu University, Japan, participated as an expert in the drafting of the Convention. In the course of his work, Professor Kono sensed that cooperation between WIPO and UNESCO on ICH issues could be strengthened and that mutual understanding needed reinforced. To help remedy that situation, Kyushu University co-organized an international conference in India in 2007 on the interface between ICH and intellectual property (IP) under the Convention. The conference provided a forum for professionals in the field of protection of cultural traditions.

The book, meticulously edited by Professor Kono, is a compilation of extended conference papers, which together compose a major work on the interface between the legal protection and safeguarding of ICH. Several chapters address the work of WIPO and, in particular, the WIPO Intergovern- mental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC)

The book gathers the views of scholars and practitioners with diverse expertise (lawyers, anthropologists, policy makers, academics, ethnomusicologists, archivists, and others), and national backgrounds (e.g., India, Brazil, Australia and Canada). It offers a broad overview of the issues crucial to the survival of ICH, a mainspring of cultural diversity and a source of sustainable development. The book covers four main themes and opens with an outline of unanswered questions surrounding the ICH Convention that are then developed in subsequent chapters.

Part two provides an analysis of...