The Legal Protection Of Traditional Cultural Expression In The Greater China Region – A Search For Legal Hormanisation

Abstract

This article seeks to investigates the ways and means to harmonise the legal regimes of the copyright protection on the traditional cultural expression (“TCE”) or folklore in the Greater China Region. It wants to resolve this important issue: why has the three main jurisdictions in the Greater China Region — People’s Republic of China (“PRC”), Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (“HKSAR”) and Taiwan which shared many forms of TCE got a different level in copyright protection in law? The article will explore and assess certain causal factors leading to the inadequacies in the legal protection of the TCE in these three jurisdictions, and the transboundary copyright issues of the TCE and to propose mechanisms to resolve these disputes, under or outside the legal framework proposed by the World International Property Organisation (“WIPO”).