Shodh Prabha: A Multidisciplinary Journal

Bridging the Chasm: Integrating India’s Tribal Customary Practices into the Modern Intellectual Property Rights Regime

India has one of the most extensive collections of Traditional Knowledge (TK) and Traditional Cultural Expressions (TCEs) , maintained by tribal groups through traditional medicinal use, biodiversity, agriculture, art, oral traditions and cultural ritual. The existing Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) system only protects individual ownership and innovative ideas, and therefore fails to provide adequate protection to tribal communities with respect to collective ownership and intergenerational tribal knowledge. The research aims to reveal what gaps exist between tribal customs and the current IPR system and possible avenues for effective protection. The study uses qualitative and doctrinal approaches based on both primary and secondary sources, where the primary sources consist of national laws and treaties, while the secondary sources include books, government papers, and court decisions. This investigation seeks to assess the effect of biopiracy on tribal cultures as well as the effectiveness of present-day legal regimes while offering recommendation for a new sui generis intellectual property rule system to regulate intellectual property holdings by tribal communities, including community tribal ownership, equitable community-wide participation in benefit-sharing, and a sworn community commitment to the fair distribution of community resources to enhance the effectiveness of the administration of tribal IP in India.