Abstract

Crafts fall within the domain of intangible cultural heritage and the creative industries, and have been supported by both cultural policy and industrial policy. This paper focuses on the skills and cultural contents of crafts and examines the application of intellectual property rights to crafts. In cultural economics, many papers have focused on copyright but few have discussed other intellectual property rights, particularly patents, design rights, and trademarks.

This paper clarifies the economic rationale of intellectual property rights with reference to previous studies in law and economics. Also, I examine how intellectual property rights can be applied to crafts and problems related to this through court cases. I explore previous investigations and studies on the effect of a regional collective trademark on craft products and present conclusions and future issues.