Beyond The Trips Paradigm: Reimagining Intellectual Property Through An Indian Decolonial Lens
- IJLLR Journal
- Apr 22
- 2 min read
Jithin George, Christ (Deemed to be University), Delhi-NCR
ABSTRACT
This article adopts a Critical Legal Studies (CLS) approach, enriched by Marxist political economy and post‐colonial theory, to interrogate the colonial genealogy and contemporary functioning of the global patent regime. It argues that the dominant intellectual property rights (IPR) framework, particularly in the field of patents, is not a neutral, universal system of innovation incentives but a juridical technology that reproduces patterns of colonial extractivism by systematically subordinating traditional knowledge (TK) to Eurocentric conceptions of property and invention. The article contends that the treatment of TK as part of an undifferentiated “public domain” unless transformed into patent‐compatible form constitutes a modality of structural violence against indigenous peoples and local communities. It uses the Indian experience especially emblematic biopiracy controversies involving Neem, Turmeric and Basmati, and the construction of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL)to demonstrate how post‐colonial states navigate, resist and sometimes internalize the epistemic assumptions of the patent system.
Against this backdrop, the article evaluates the 2024 WIPO Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge (“WIPO GRATK Treaty”) as a purported attempt to recalibrate the relationship between patents and TK. It asks to what extent the treaty succeeds in shifting the ontological basis of IPR from a model of individualized ownership to one of community custodianship. The article argues that while the treaty introduces important mandatory disclosure obligations and symbolically recognizes indigenous peoples and local communities, it remains structurally committed to the ontology of discrete, exclusive, time‐bound patent rights. The core contribution is to theorize the classification of TK as “public domain” as a form of structural violence, to read TKDL as both a defensive and normalizing apparatus, and to demonstrate that the WIPO GRATK Treaty effects only a partial, reformist displacement of colonial logics rather than a deep decolonization of IPR.
Keywords: Critical Legal Studies; post‐colonial theory; Marxism; traditional knowledge; TKDL; WIPO GRATK Treaty; structural violence; accumulation by dispossession; community custodianship; decolonization.
