Intellectual Property: Migration- abstracts
Nika Abkowicz-Bieńko
This paper compares two types of an exclusive ‘right’ of publication operating in the absence of copyright enforcement. The historical practice of ‘courtesy copyright’ is compared with the ‘translate until licensed’ practice in modern online translation communities. Both practices arose as a community response to the cross-border movement of literary works outside the realm of effective copyright protection. The historical practice arose in the absence of copyright protection, while the modern practice operates in the context of infringement of unenforced copyright.
Courtesy copyright was the principle of non-competition between publishers resulting in an ‘official’ publication within the new market, with the possibility of renumeration for the original author or publisher. Translate until licensed is a principle under which unauthorised translations are removed from circulation upon an authorised translation being licensed. Both practices involve an unauthorised publication, an element of non-competition, a certain level of respect paid to the interests of the original author or publisher, and community enforcement of norms.
This paper argues a similarity between these forms of non-copyright protections offered by publishing communities as mitigatory measures in the context of regulatory systems rejected as inadequately governing appropriate relations between publishers, other publishers, and rightsholders. It examines the limitations of community self-regulation outside of a broader copyright framework. This forms the first study directly comparing courtesy copyright with the translate until licensed practice; previous studies, situated primarily outside the legal field with only a cursory overview of the copyright implications, have addressed the two practices entirely independently.
Enrico Bonadio, Magali Contardi, Nicola Lucchi
The countries of the New World are nations of immigrants who brought their culture to the New World. Indeed, when European farmers emigrated to other countries, they continued to produce the cheese, wine, and spirits they had made in Europe. They essentially took the methods of making the products and the names to their new homes and used them in good faith. They also called these products by the names used in Europe (e.g., Feta, Asiago, Munster, Gorgonzola, Bologna, Budweis, and more recently Prosecco). Thus, during migration, food products were introduced along Italian, Spanish or French lines, or names were used that were associated with the migrants' country of origin. As a result, many European food names are used worldwide.
The reliance on common names and the lack of clarity in Geographical Indications (GIs) regulations pose a risk to many producers and consumers. In this paper, we will illustrate some paradigmatic examples (e.g., Prosecco, Budweiser, Rioja, etc.), considering if it is possible to explore some pragmatic solutions to foster a balance between appropriate protections for GIs and adequate safeguards for (what have become in some countries of the New World) common names of the relevant product. The article will specifically analyse the impact of migrations waves towards the New World on the debate whether European requests to claw back European geographical names go too far; and whether such demands risk to jeopardise the rights acquired by the New World descendants of those migrants who started using those names to describe their own cheeses, ham, wine and spirits.
Oren Bracha
In the decades bracketing the turn of the twentieth century a new legal theory of trademarks had developed: brand property. Brand property competed with the traditional understanding of trademark law as a fraud-based legal field designed to protect the product-origin communicative function of marks. At its heart stood the general power to exclude others from using and enjoying the economic value of brands as valuable semiotic assets of the firm. The paper argues that the concept of brand property arose out of the everyday practices of lawyers. Prior to the development of articulated theories of brand property and the legal doctrines in which they were embedded, there were lawyers registering, policing, and assigning trademark rights. It is within these practices that a consciousness, or a raw experience, of brand property arose. Specifically, two elements appeared in these practices that were essential for the concept of brand property. First, an object of property, eventually known as the brand, was created by reifying what previously was seen as dynamic communicative relations. Second, the brand came to be experienced as a firm asset of substantial market value that had to be protected and policed. Brand consciousness eventually gave rise to and grounded a more articulated legal theory and ideology of brand property. The paper reconstructs this process by exploring the trademark practices of the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company and its legal counsel in the early twentieth century. The account demonstrates how property rights arise “from below,” not through social norms, but through social practice and consciousness that endow abstract property concepts with determinacy.
Gargi Chakrabarti
Geographical Indication (GI) is a subject matter of intellectual property, in which the goods originating from a specific geographical location is protected because of its certain quality or reputation which is essentially attributable to its geographical origin. This article is a qualitative study of impact of migration on GI protected goods. The paper inquires whether migration pose some issues or concern regarding the GI protection of such goods. Migration is an ancient phenomena, which has immense impact on socio-cultural identity of human civilization. Many of the GI protected agricultural or non-agricultural goods are found to have their origin in other country or geographical location, hence migration may have an impact on its transfer; but communities in the current location nurture them to build the geography-linked characteristics and sanctity of the goods to qualify for GI protection. So this research will study the importance of characteristics and reputation in relation to current geographical location, without denying the impact of migration, but emphasizing on local resonance. This study will be limited to few handicraft GI of India or other South-East Asian Countries, like (i) Bandhani sarees and its migration from Sindh (similarity with Shibori art); (ii) Uppada Jamdani & Fulia Jamdani and its migration from Dhakai Jamdani (Bangladesh); and (iii) Batik of South-East Asia and its migration from Egypt or other parts of Africa.
Lauren Crais & Vittoria Mastrandrea
Cultural objects and cultural expressions have an uneasy relationship with property, both physical and intellectual. How far can culture be ‘owned’? Where are those boundaries drawn? Who decides? The intangible values of cultural output makes the answers to these questions complex and elusive.
The unsatisfactory nature of the existing systems determining the place of (intellectual) property in the heritage field can be illustrated with reference to two separate and yet related types of cultural creation: objects and expressions. Specifically, this paper examines how objects might be deemed ‘national treasures’ and made property of the State, and how intangible expressions might similarly shift from commonplace routines to rituals significant to a cultural community and deemed cultural heritage. It will map the property (or property-like) status of these cultural productions at different stages of their existence.
Where an object or an expression transforms into a cultural one, this is a form of migration: a movement from one status, understanding, or value to another. Can the borders between these theoretical geographies be identified, what does the journey between them entail, and who stands sentry at them?
Given all this, these migrations may best be considered as (intellectual) property shifts. Does an expression in such terms help to clarify what is happening? This paper engages with theories drawn from property, intellectual property, and heritage studies; it will seek to chart these migrations, naming them and explaining them, to better wrangle these unwieldy and elusive transformations in terms that can be more easily understood.
Intangible cultural heritage may be understood as ritual, dance, folklore, etc., but for the purposes of this paper will be explored via the medium of heritage cuisine.
Naama Daniel
Israeli intellectual property (IP) laws are largely based on rules originating in other common law jurisdictions, adopted either by the legislative branch through the act of legislation, or by the judicial branch through court precedents. This paper discusses a case in which the two branches applied rules originating in different jurisdictions to the same matter – the overlap between copyright and design – creating, to paraphrase the concept of legal transplants, a legal Frankenstein of foreign laws.
The first pieces of legislation to address IP in Israel, in the early 1900s, were translations of British IP laws, including the British copyright-design overlap clause. To date, the Israeli Copyright Act states, in general, that the two are mutually exclusive: subject-matters eligible for design protection are not eligible for copyright protection, unless the design is not used, or intended to be used, for industrial production. Accordingly, in the 1980s, the Israeli Supreme Court adopted the 1941 British ruling regarding the character Popeye the Sailor, clarifying that the mutual-exclusivity clause test focused on the intention of the author at the time of creation. Decades later, in 2017, the Israeli Supreme Court, referring to the character Mickey Mouse, surprisingly opted to diverge from the Copyright Act’s mutual-exclusivity test, and adopted instead the U.S. separability test, granting copyright protection to works that can be separated from the article to which they are applied.
This paper critically analyzes the discrepancies between Israeli (UK-based) legislation and Israeli (U.S.-based) recent judicial precedent in light of the evolution of IP laws.
Alexandra Dvorkin
About a century and a half before copyright, in 1549, the Mantuan printer Jacomo Roffinello published I Discorsi, a translation with commentary of Dioscorides’s (c. 40–90) herbal De materia medica by the naturalist and physician Pietro Andrea Mattioli, despite the latter’s resistance. Roffinello obtained a printing privilege and published a copy of Mattioli’s bestselling edition, originally published in 1548 in Venice by Vincenzo Valgrisi, adding scientifically-inaccurate botanical illustrations to increase popularity and profit. Although Roffinello’s was a single edition, Mattioli hastily denied it and published another, in 1550 in Venice, sans illustrations. In the introduction, he stressed the deception of botanical illustration and the importance of knowledge of plants, and added a supporting letter by his nephew, a physician, against Roffinello and the images. Moreover, the new edition includes decade-valid privileges by both the Venetian Senate and the Papacy, restricting jurisdictionally the herbal’s production and distribution to Valgrisi alone.
Few early-modern books were as successful as Mattioli's, but the ‘piratic’ edition that, eventually, in 1554, led the author to turn his herbal into an illustrated botanical guide that captivated readers across Europe has not received significant attention. In my paper, I examine the case of the Mantuan publication of I Discorsi through the prism of botanical development, the printing revolution, and the scientific uncertainty of the period. As the notion of intellectual property did not yet exist, and Roffinello was granted a privilege, I will suggest that rather than stealing Mattioli’s intellectual property Roffinello committed theft of intellectual authority.
Dave Fossum
Since the 1980s-90s, EU accession negotiations, market liberalization, and trade agreements have driven a dramatic overhaul of Turkey’s intellectual property (IP) system, transforming musical ownership and creativity in the process. This paper ethnographically documents how a range of music sector actors—including judges, lawyers, copyright collecting society officials, publishers, musicians, and record producers—participate in this project of IP reform. While these individuals often inhabit a cosmopolitan subjectivity and see themselves as equal participants in a global IP regime, they also encounter dissonance between an imagined, more functional copyright regime and their experience of Turkey’s imperfect one. And since copyright policies vary internationally and the domestic actors involved also pursue their own agendas as they contribute to IP reform, translating international IP law into the Turkish context involves a complex negotiation.
Adapting Ewick and Silbey’s classic (1998) account of legal consciousness, I identify a set of narrative frames that mediate how such actors enact and constitute copyright legality in the course of this negotiation. A normative narrative schema grounds the project in transcendent ideals and international practice. Yet these actors also engage the process pragmatically, domesticating IP by figuring it as a system in whose construction they participate. Often faced with a dissonance between the norms and practice of the law, they may account for this tension in terms of a critical narrative—as an aspect of the country’s semi-colonial position or the result of unjust power relations—or in self-orientalizing terms, as an aspect of the country’s purported backwardness.
Carl Gollnast, Paul Gollnast, Franziska Rauh
Within literature, phrases, characters, and plot elements are frequently crossing borders, moving from one text to another. Thus, they are establishing intertextual relations, including those particularly strong ones for which postcolonial and feminist literary theory have coined the term rewriting. This practice of writing back to or rewriting existing works of literature, mostly ‘classics’ of a Western literary canon, gains particular significance as a means of expression for marginalized groups whose perspectives are missing from the pre-texts. Consequently, intertextual friction and a stance of resistance often mark the relationship between rewritings and their pre-texts.
However, it is still difficult precisely to define what it means to rewrite, and the legal implications of this practice remain largely unconsidered. Our interdisciplinary paper has two objectives: First, we would like to propose a nuanced definition of rewriting as a literary practice. Second, rewriting is to be analyzed through an IP-specific lens. The focus of the legal analysis is on copyright law. Rewritings are contextualized on the continuum between infringing adaptation and free use outside the scope of protection. IP-Law faces the dilemma that it should reward the creative power of the pre-text’s author, while not stifling the creative power expressed in rewriting. We contrast the German approach to dealing with this collision through required authorization or enumerated exceptions to the more flexible ‘fair use’ doctrine of U.S. law.
We evoke a responsibility for IP-Law to enable the migration of texts to new contexts, times, and causes through rewriting.
Alexander Hartley
Claude McKay, the presiding genius of the Harlem Renaissance, was famous for his itinerant and migratory life, writing that “color consciousness was the fundamental heart of my restlessness”.[1] This paper examines two movements that coincided during the years in which McKay forged his public persona as an author: McKay’s own travels around the Atlantic world, and the equally unceasing movement, at the start of the twentieth centiry, of British colonial copyright law and its attendant ideas of authorship. Following a vein of recent scholarship that has returned to McKay’s overlooked and understudied early years,[2] this paper retells McKay’s emergence as an author in the light of two ruptures in the legal regimes governing his work – the first effected by the passage of the British Imperial Copyright Act in 1911, and the second by McKay’s departure from Jamaica in 1912. Glancing back at Jamaican Song and Story, a 1907 collection of traditional songs compiled by the English ethnographer Walter Jekyll and published in London, the paper considers how McKay’s first two books of poetry, Songs of Jamaica (Kingston, 1912) and Constab Ballads (London and Kingston, 1912), enact in their verse the same discursive competition between ‘traditional’/‘collective’ and ‘individual’ ideas of authorship, and between ‘rooted’ and ‘mobile’ notions of subjectivity, that is also enacted in the event of their transnational publication immediately following the passage of the 1911 Act. This discursive competition, I find, is reflected even at the level of mise-en-page. Complementing close reading of the poetry with a review of available publisher’s documents describing the books’ double publications in Kingston and London, the paper considers impact of both the 1911 Act and McKay’s 1912 migration to the United States on the creation and development of his authorial persona.
Barbara Lauriat
While “goodwill” in a commercial context is often described as a nineteenth-century legal creation which developed alongside the nascent doctrines of trade marks and passing off, in fact, it has far more venerable origins, dating back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Appearing in a wide variety of professional and trade disputes, goodwill as an intangible property right became a commercial and cultural reality that found its way into legal doctrines over time. Commercial goodwill as property was mentioned in British law and literature throughout the eighteenth century, and loss of goodwill was habitually accounted for in government takings by the end of the century. Far from being an innovation itself, the protection of goodwill as an economic interest can be found across several strains of case law, long before Lord Parker identified it as the organizing principle of the tort of passing off in Spalding v. Gamage (1915). In essence, goodwill as an intangible right became so widely accepted as a commercial reality over the centuries that it migrated into the law.
Goodwill continues to have a life outside the intellectual property context, as seen, for example, in the 2020 UK Court of Appeal case of Primus International v. Triumph Controls, which interpreted a contractual exclusion related to liability for loss of goodwill. This paper argues that IP scholars should strive to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the historical development of goodwill beyond merely its trade mark-like attributes. An appreciation of the broader nature of goodwill is essential to understanding how it came to be identified as the object of protection in the common law tort of passing off, as well as a central part of trade mark law discourse in many jurisdictions around the world today.
Diana Liebenau
We commonly think of copyright as a means of discrimination: discrimination of markets and of price. Aside from the national treatment principle in multilateral treaties, we do not think of copyright and anti-discrimination in conjunction. However, the paper will show that copyright can be perceived as a right that accommodates the interests of vulnerable groups in society that are a target of discrimination, such as immigrants or religious minorities.
Copyright is deemed to be aesthetically neutral – it neither evaluates artistic merits nor discriminates against certain forms of art. Along with aesthetic neutrality comes a notion of moral neutrality: Copyright – unlike other IP rights – does not evaluate moral merits either and thus does not have an explicit rule against protecting works with discriminatory subject matter. I will show that both tenets result from freedom of art as a constitutional right and push back against the copyright as property narrative. I will also show in a doctrinal analysis of various elements of copyright protection that copyright does protect the interests of third parties, not only third-party constitutional rights of free speech (which have received lots of attention lately), but also non-discrimination.
The paper is neither a philosophical reconceptualization in the vein of “IP as X” scholarship nor part of the critical theory movement. It rather harnesses the power and shows the limitations of constitutional rights analysis – which is already dominant in Germany and Europe – to make copyright more “public”.
Yvonne Ndelle, Jeremy de Beer, Chidi Oguamanam
The decoupling of biological information from its physical specimen, commonly referred to digital sequence information (DSI), is posing significant challenges for the international governance of plant genetic resources for agriculture and food.
DSI has many benefits, one of which is the capacity to enhance food security. However, the technology also poses many governance challenges with key issues around domestic and international regulations, international agreements governing genetic resources, access and benefits sharing mechanisms and traditional knowledge. This paper, therefore, theoretically unpacks the governance of DSI using Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework and offers insights into the governance gaps and challenges with the current institutional configuration.
DSI is a classic example of a transformative technology which is often problematic for institutional and regulatory systems, because its accompanying pressures sometimes require institutional or regulatory adjustments or a complete system overhaul. DSI also represents a paradigm shift because it constitutes new knowledge and requires new ways of thinking about digital genomic information. Transformative technologies usually create disequilibrium in society, destabilize existing structures and often mark a turning point or decisive moment for society at large.
This paper offers an in-depth discussion on DSI as a transformative technology and adopts the stance that a critical assessment of the current governance landscape, is a good starting point for normative discourse about appropriate models for future DSI governance. The primary goal is to add to our current understanding of the challenges and gaps that characterize the overall DSI governance structure in the agri-food space.
Neil Netanel
The EU Directive on Copyright in the Single Digital Market establishes an exclusive ancillary right of press publishers, vis-à-vis online news aggregators like Google News, to make news story extracts available to the public. The right aims ensure the sustainability of a free and pluralist press, as essential for the proper functioning of a democratic society.
The idea of a press publishers’ right has migrated to countries around the world, including Australia, Canada, and the United States. In addition, it is now being transposed into national laws within the EU. As the press publishers’ right has migrated, it has generally metamorphosed from an IP right to a right, based in competition law, to bargaining under mandatory arbitration.
The U.S. Copyright Office recommended against adopting a press publishers’ right. The Copyright Office report notes that news publishers’ financial straits are better addressed by competition policy than copyright. It also concludes that an IP right would likely be ineffective so long as publishers depend on online news aggregators for to reach audiences.
My paper surveys the migration of the press publishers’ right both geographically and conceptually. I ask whether Google News acts as a substitute for reading news stories on news publishers’ websites or as a complementary service that makes news stories more discoverable. That question bears on whether the press publishers’ right and competition right make sense as a matter of policy. I also ask whether the publishers’ right can be targeted to providing financial support only to trustworthy, quality journalism.
Shelly Pasternak
Humans carry with them what Richard Dawkins named Memes, Genes’ cultural equivalent, the building blocks encoding information. Much like biology, cultural evolution entails repetition and reaction to mutations, via natural selection and survival of the fittest. Organisms, Dawkins argued, should be perceived as carriers of genes – mere pawns of successful genes. Similarly, rather than perceiving humans as generating ideas, culture “uses” humans as carriers, where most successful ideas prevail.
When migrating, people may wish (or be required) to assimilate into their new surroundings. Then, some memes fade away, while others endure, despite efforts to adapt. Such movement is noticeable in art, especially literature, which primarily relies on language and its intertwined cultural cosmos. Therefore, either as part of their adaptation, or as a calculated effort to obscure their origin (be it for appealing to consumers, or express criticism), authors might prefer publishing their work under different names. This is how, for example, Roman Kacew, became Romain Gary, and later on Émile Ajar; or how Benjamin Franklin was able to tackle gender stereotypes. Intellectual Property Law, in extending copyright and moral rights to authors of anonymous and pseudonymous works, provides room for such experimentation. The paper examines the pseudonymity practice, as a tool in the migration process. One that allows foreigners to assimilate, but also provides authors with the means to transgress national, gender and racial boundaries, in order to voice their critique. Such practice, however, also leaves authors vulnerable when their authenticity is challenged, particularly in current identity politics atmosphere.
Giovanni Maria Riccio & Federica Pezza
At the beginning of the century, Naples, and Southern Italy in general, were experiencing high levels of emigration, especially to North America. Many neighborhoods called Little Italy were formed in the United States and in Canada. These immigrants, in an attempt to maintain a link with their homeland, found a foothold in the ancient and deep-rooted Neapolitan traditions including music (opera), theatre and the figurative arts. Thereafter, Neapolitan song (Canzone Napoletana) became a tool to remain Italian for those who were now permanently linked to their status as immigrants and who tried to export some aspects of their cultural roots.
The present paper moves from the recent developments of Canzone Napoletana as an identity tool and goes back to its origins, with the aim of highlighting both its historical roots and its corresponding legal treatment. In this respect, the Authors first point out that the nature of Canzone Napoletana is different from local folk music as it responds to different needs. Indeed, folk music is conceived as a part of a ritual, and it fulfills a function within such ritual. On the other hand, Canzone Napoletana, is closely connected to the economic interests of the middle class and music publishers, with the declared intention of becoming an internationally recognized artistic form. Furthermore, the Canzone Napoletana took many inspirations from the Neapolitan folk music, even if strongly influenced the style of the chanson française.
Second, coming to the law, as the Authors suggest, this is an area where we assist to a singular interplay between appropriation and call for protection, with the “complicity” of the copyright law of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and with the first Italian copyright law, once Naples was annexed to the Reign of Italy. Indeed, on the one hand Canzone Napoletana borrowed or better “appropriated” most of the Neapolitan songs in the public domain. On the other hand, the question of protectability still arises given that, as things now stand, Italian law does not seem to pay much attention to the protection of traditional works, limiting itself to the application of the Berne Convention.
Zvi S. Rosen
In 1998, the United States passed a package of copyright reforms, including the extension of most copyright terms by 20 years. In the news at the time it was derisively called the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, and it was widely noted that it was passed with the expiration of copyright in the first Mickey Mouse cartoon looming. Steamboat Willy is now set to enter the public domain at the stroke of midnight at the start of 2024.
Those knowledgeable about the issue have long known that Europe made this 20 year extension in 1993, and the 1998 amendments represented at least partially the American accession to these changes given the rule of the lesser term. Songwriters and composers, who were concerned about losing performance royalties on both sides of the Atlantic, also lobbied heavily for this measure.
Although not indifferent, Disney and the film industry generally were more interested in the implementation of the WIPO Copyright Treaty though the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, given that the DVD format had just been launched without the treaty being implemented in the United States. The two measures were separate in the 104th Congress and failed, but with an additional push in the 105th Congress they succeeded.
This piece explores how we tell stories about the law, how a measure migrated from Europe to America, and given how Disney’s involvement in the 1998 term extension has become internet lore and a political hot topic again recently, discusses how and why it matters.
Cristiana Sappa
Cultural heritage collected in museums becomes more and more frequently the content of digitized material, such as interactive multimedia works, including video-games, augmented and virtual reality experiences, or NFTs. This happens for two reasons. The first one is connected to a social and cultural aspect, i.e. the aim of shortening the distances between individuals and cultural heritage, by providing a more entertainment-based cultural offer. The second is related to economic interests of both museums and market operators to exploit cultural heritage material, in particular in the downstream digital-based markets. On the one hand, museums may be tempted to develop these digital content for attracting more visitors at their premises, and therefore have higher revenues that help them to sustain the costs related to their public task. On the other hand, the development of these digital contents show the increasing attention and subsequent evolution of the market in this sector.
The impact of this is twofold. On the one hand, social behaviours evolve, and the risk associated to the digital migration of cultural heritage is that younger generations may consider access to premises and original pieces equivalent to the access to the digital reproductions. This may also lead the practice of museums to take an audience-driven approach instead of a collection-driven approach. On the other hand, with reference to such a migration, the role of copyright may change and take back its essential shape and (supposedly) mission. Copyright has been regularly used by museums as a self-funding mechanism, while it is supposed to be a tool for promoting creativity. In the digital realm reproducing cultural heritage, copyright becomes again a mean to promote creativity in two different perspectives. It may create incentives to those market operators that develop the above-mentioned digital material; and it may boost creativity within museums thanks to exceptions and limitations.
Narendran Thiruthy
The Traditional Cultural Expressions (TCEs), preserved and practised by the migratory tribes in Western Ghats, represent their socio-cultural identity. The practice of TCEs is often associated with their religious beliefs, spiritual traditions and sometimes even their livelihood. Misappropriation and misrepresentation of these TCEs in popular culture are insensitive to their religious and cultural beliefs. There is a lack of legal protection against the misappropriation or misrepresentation of TCEs. Even though the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 recognises the ‘community right to intellectual property and traditional knowledge related to biodiversity and cultural diversity’, the modalities for operationalization of this right are unclear. Discussions are going on at the international and national levels about the possibilities of developing a legal framework for the adequate protection of TCEs. WIPO IGC has already entered text-based negotiation over a draft treaty framework. Still, considerable disagreements exist about the nature, scope and modalities of protecting TCE. The considerations about an intellectual property-based model of protection also raise many challenges.
This research intends to identify (1) perceptions of Scheduled tribes about the misappropriation and misrepresentation of their TCEs, (2) Conception of the allocation of property rights in TCEs, (3) Perceptions about exclusive ownership and permitted use, and (4) Challenges of migratory tribes in the preservation of cultural heritage. This analysis will help identify the elements of a legal framework for TCEs. The fieldwork is done in the Western Ghats, known for its exceptionally high biological diversity and endemism level. The scheduled tribes inhabiting the region possess distinct socio-cultural beliefs and practices. The TCEs identified during the study is documented, explicitly mentioning their socio-cultural and historical context. Based on the field study, this paper proposes some design elements for giving legal protection to TCEs in India.
