This book critically analyses the relationships between intangible cultural heritage (ICH), sustainable development and intellectual property rights (IPRs). The author argues that although the use of IPRs to safeguard ICH presents challenges and has impeded sustainable development in some cases, the adoption of these rights on ICH also presents opportunities and, fundamentally, is not contrary to the spirit of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO 2003 Convention). The adoption of IPRs on ICH can form an important part of the development of sustainable safeguarding plans capable of benefitting the communities, groups and individuals (CGIs) that create, maintain and transmit such heritage. The book provides a nuanced analysis of the relationship between intellectual property (IP) law and ICH as well as examining the role of IPRs in safeguarding ICH through the lens of sustainable development. It analyses the relationship between IP law and ICH from environmental, social and economic perspectives. These perspectives allow a thorough evaluation of both the positive effects and potential pitfalls of adopting IPRs to safeguard ICH. The book addresses deeper structural matters that refer back to the safeguarding of social and environmental processes underlying ICH.
Benedetta Ubertazzi has been a UNESCO Facilitator on the global capacity building programme for the effective implementation of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and a capacity builder with the International Academy on UNESCO Designations and Sustainable Development since 2018. She is a tenured Aggregate Professor of European Union Law at the University of Milan-Bicocca, a Jean Monnet Module coordinator (2022-2025), a lecturer for the WIPO-Turin Master of Laws in Intellectual Property and an expert in the WIPO Indigenous and Local Community Women Entrepreneurship Program. She has been a Von Humboldt Foundation Fellow (hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition) since 2010 and she is a member of the International Law Association Committees for Participation in Global Cultural Heritage Governance (appointed by the chairs) and respectively Intellectual Property and Private International Law.
In 2018, she becamea co-evaluator for UNESCO at the Regional Research Centre for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage in West and Central Asia (UNESCO Category 2 Centre) based in Tehran. She has served as a legal expert for the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation at multinational negotiations of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage since 2010. She has been a co-facilitator of capacity-building for sustainable development plans for several communities around the world and she is a legal expert for many elements, including
Traditional violin craftsmanship in Cremona (UNESCO Representative List 2012); and
Falconry, a living human heritage (UNESCO Representative List 20216), among others. She is a member of the steering committees for the inscription of
Tocatì, programme for the safeguarding of traditional games and sports and respectively
Alpine Food Heritage: Knowledge, knowledge, skills, practices and values of alpine communities (both in the nomination phase for the UNESCO Register of Good Safeguarding Practices). Between 2018–2021, she was a member of the ‘HIPAMS Heritage Sensitive Intellectual Property and Marketing Strategies: India’ project, which was supported and facilitated by the British Library Sustainable Development Programme, Coventry University and communities in West Bengal, India.
