Submitted under Agenda Item 7 of the 52nd session of the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore. The proposal calls for the preparation and circulation of a questionnaire on member states' use of sui generis protections for traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions — surveying how existing national systems operate and what outcomes they have produced, rather than cataloguing statutes. The Committee reached no consensus. The proposal was carried forward.
- Session
- IGC 52 · March 4–13, 2026 · WIPO Headquarters, Geneva
- Chair
- Laine Fisher (New Zealand)
- Disposition
- No consensus. Discussion continues at IGC 53.
- Next Session
- IGC 53 · September 16–25, 2026 · Geneva
- Standing Texts
- WIPO/GRTKF/IC/52/4 (TK) · WIPO/GRTKF/IC/52/5 (TCEs) — both still bracketed
On March 4, 2026, in Geneva, the delegation of the United States placed a single document on the table of the World Intellectual Property Organization. It is catalogued as WIPO/GRTKF/IC/52/6. It does not propose a treaty. It proposes a questionnaire.
The ask is narrow and, for us, decisive: survey the member states that have already enacted sui generis protections for traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions — and report not what the statutes say, but how they work in practice. What was registered. What was licensed. What was paid. The Committee reached no consensus. It carried the proposal to IGC 53, September 16–25, 2026.
Twenty-six years of negotiation have produced one treaty and two bracketed texts. The impasse is not moral. It is evidential. No one can point to a working system.
MADE CX is not a petition to that committee. It is the operating answer to its question. The BCID solves notice — an outsider cannot be asked to define cultural property, but can be asked to search a registry, the way markets already search ISBN, ISRC, and LEI. The Cultural Use License solves permission without demanding a perpetual exclusive right the global IP system will never grant. The Public Ledger solves proof. Thirteen sovereign registries. Six chambers. Live.
Registries
Chambers
Economy
Negotiation
Note what we are not. We are not demandeurs. We do not seek retroactive restrictions on public material. We do not ask governments to define what a culture is. We built the market instead — voluntary, priced, contractual, and compatible with every copyright and trademark regime already in force.
They asked for evidence that a system like this can function.
We have been generating it, transaction by transaction, since before they asked.
Cultural property has been the one asset class with demand, with price, and with no title. Until now!
Yours in the interest of the race,