Pandora Opened the Box—What Actually Followed? A Twenty-One-Year Reckoning

Abstract

This article reflects on a doctoral research project undertaken at a moment of optimism regarding the adaptability of the international intellectual property (IP) system to accommodate traditional knowledge and genetic resources (TKGR). Initiated in parallel with the establishment of the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC), the research engaged with a field that at the time lay outside mainstream IP scholarship, particularly in the Nordic context. While international negotiations proceeded without producing concrete outcomes for many years, numerous national and regional initiatives sought to address TKGR protection, often with mixed results. Against this backdrop, the doctoral thesis examined the very premise of a dedicated legal entitlement for TKGR, questioning not only how such an entitlement might be structured, but whether it was necessary at all. By moving beyond prevailing assumptions that favoured the automatic creation of sui generis rights, the research offered a principled and structural analysis of alternative regulatory approaches and their interaction with existing international IP norms. Looking back more than two decades later, the article revisits these questions in light of subsequent developments, including the eventual adoption of a multilateral treaty, and assesses what has—and has not—changed in the international governance of TKGR.