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Samoa Set to Protect Traditional Culture
19 October 2012
Samoa has begun developing intellectual property rights laws in an effort to protect traditional knowledge and culture, according to a Radio Australia report.
Radio Australia reports Samoa’s Law Reform Commission as stating that several countries are profiting from Samoa’s traditional knowledge and ideas because laws protecting them are inadequate, and that the Commission is about to begin public consultations to see if laws on customary lands and titles should be extended to include intellectual property.
Houlton Faasau, a spokesman for the Commission, told Radio Australia that they’re yet to establish to what extent their ideas have been borrowed. “I think firstly, medicinal knowledge, traditional knowledge (and) another is the designs of our tattoos,” he said. “These are meant to be tattooed on the skin and yet in other neighbouring Pacific Islands like Fiji they've actually printed this on material and put flowers on it and this is actually quite insulting in the Samoan culture.”
