Intellectual Property Rights And Special Rights Of China's Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection

With the quickening of progress in global economy integration, it has become moreand more important to preserve the human culture diversity and national specialities.Thus, the protection of intangible cultural heritage became a hot topic attracting theattentions from home and abroad. In 2003 UNESCO passed Convention for theSafeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. In 2004 our country joined the pact,and also organized to draft out the People's Republic of China Intangible CulturalHeritage Protection Law. Under this circumstance, based on our national environmentand conditions this thesis properly quoted the worldwide experience in protectingintangible cultural heritage and conducively discussed how to protect nationalintangible cultural heritage through effective and feasible legal approach. Hopefully,this thesis can contribute some useful suggestions to our national legislation,law-enforcement and judicial administration practice.This thesis started from the objective of protecting intangible cultural heritage andemphasized the safegurding and continuable development of intangible cultural heritagewhich is near extinction. This thesis also introduced and analyzed the concept and rangeof intangible cultural heritage, also the relationship between the traditional knowledgeand relevant concepts. Since there are many kinds of intangible cultural heritage,through concrete differentiating and proper choosing this thesis firstly clarified theobjects of intangible cultural heritage which can be protected by intellectual property,including folk literature and art, traditional technology, and traditional discriminatingsymbols. Furthermore, this thesis ascertained that the uncertainty and mass-basedcharacteristic of main body could not make up of the barriers of safeguarding intangiblecultural heritage through intellectual property. On this basis it paid much emphasis indiscussing how to make use of copyright, patent right, trademark right, geographicalindication right, business privacy etc in order to protect the three objects mentionedabove. In some extent intellectual property can be very useful in safeguarding intangiblecultural heritage. However, because much of intangible cultural heritage was producedby the masses long time ago and disseminated orally it could not be protectedcompletely by intellectual property. For example, only do intangible cultural heritagepossess some conditions it could be protected by the current intellectual property law.Moreover, the protecting period of most intellectual property are too short and someimportant message can be lost during this period. Just because safeguarding intangiblecultural heritage through intellectual property are limited to some extent, it is verynecessary to analyze farther how to safeguard intangible cultural heritage throughspecial law or other legal approach. By doing this, the job of safeguarding our nationalintangible cultural heritage can be reinforced and improved.