Collective Intellectual Right? A Case on Protected Geography Indicated

Abstract

Many literature in the collaboration of innovation have suggested inventors should avoid the join ownership of intellectual property. However, in a special case the intellectual right can be assigned to a product. Our paper addresses the issues and challenges of shared intellectual right in the context of Protected Geography Indicated (PGI). The PGI recognizes such products based on their originality (in term of geography), not based on who have been invented them. This highlights that the right is belong to a community, not to individuals. In practice, this is problematic in which individuals in a community may or able to claim the right on the product. To illustrate how policy makers in developing country deal with this situation, we use secondary data from Indonesian Agency on Intellectual Property and case studies on indigenous food products. We approached the cases using theory of resolving potential conflict in community. The discussion in our contribution is taking aim at identifying of problems of which may be occurred during the process of Intellectual Right application. Further, we propose recommendations for individual, communal, and policy levels to resolve potential problems in the future.