CHS Faculty Affiliate and Anthropology Graduate Student Begin Work on
Intellectual Property Law Project

CHS faculty affiliate and Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Jane Anderson, and PhD student Julie Woods secured start-up research funds from the Institute of Intellectual Property and Social Justice at Howard University School of Law for their project "The Utility of Cultural Protocols within Intellectual Property Law | Bridging Historical Exclusions and Building Future Relationships | Stage One."

Their project focuses on cultural protocols—non-legislative guidelines or agreements that outline procedures or delineate conditions for working with cultural or intellectual property. Protocols are increasingly being used as alternative means for managing access and control of knowledge in contexts where the limits of intellectual property law have been reached.

The first stage of their project involves researching and analyzing protocols in practice: for instance how and when protocols are developed and in what circumstances they become effective tools for advancing Indigenous interests in access and control of valuable knowledge resources.

Through their research, Anderson and Woods seeks to fill a substantial gap in understanding the recent proliferation of cultural protocols and the new relationships around knowledge use these protocols make possible. They hope that their results will be useful for Indigenous communities who use protocols to engage with researchers and industries.

The Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice at Howard University School of Law was founded in 2002 to address the social justice implications of intellectual property protection, both domestically and globally. The tenets of IIPSJ are derived from the history of racial and ethnic cultural misappropriation and related inequitable exploitation of intellectual property in America and the on-going need for inclusive intellectual property protection and use policies, particularly resonant in the African American and similarly marginalized communities, which are in dire need of avenues to facilitate equal access to justice and opportunities for political, economic and social equality. IIPSJ develops and works to promote programs and policies that emphasize the socially beneficial use and protection of intellectual property, particularly within these communities, which have been traditionally underserved and underrepresented in intellectual property ownership, exploitation, and use.