On Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage in China from the Intellectual Property Rights Perspective

With the development of globalization, intangible cultural heritage (ICH) has come under increasing threat, making the safeguarding of ICH a crucial task for the governments and peoples of the world. This paper examines China’s current state of intellectual property (IPR) protection for ICH and proposes that ICH be placed under China’s legislative protection as intellectual property. Due to the immense diversity and complexity of ICH and the difficulty in reconciling various interests involved, the existing IPR protection mode faces many obstacles in practice. We present two case studies and three sets of recommendations on improving the protection of ICH in China. The first set relies on improving copyright protection for ICH, the second set relies on improving trademark and geographical protection for ICH, and the third set relies on improving patent protection for ICH.