Abstract:

This study, Minding Culture: Case Studies on Intellectual Property and Traditional Cultural Expressions, presents specific and actual examples where Indigenous Australians have explored and used intellectual property laws to protect their arts and cultural expressions.In many instances, they show how Indigenous Australians have been able to do so through acquiring, exercising, enforcing and managing intellectual property rights. However there are shortfalls in the intellectual property system, as the studies indicate. For example, stories that are orally transmitted are often not protected under copyright, at least not in common law systems. Works that are very old, where the original creator passed away more than fifty years ago, are not protected.