Digital Rights Management and the Traditional Knowledge Database

Patenting traditional knowledge (TK) without the consent of right-holders is a contentious issue. There are a number of proposals that seek to defeat Western patents of TK by using a database to defeat novelty. Legal protection of these databases, particularly in the USA, appears to be a concern of many potential TK right-holders. There are provisions in international and US law that can protect a TK database from infringers