IPinCH Community-based Initiatives / Case Studies (CBI/CS)* examine Intellectual Property (IP) issues in specific situations in communities. These initiatives are crucial in helping us to document and explore the diversity of principles, perspectives, and responses that arise in connection with IP issues. After community review and approval, results will be made available to our Working Groups as an empirical foundation for discussion, comparison, and theoretical analysis. Working Group findings will be made available to Partners and stakeholders for refining their policies and approaches.
We are promoting the use of Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) methods in the development of our CBI/CSs. There is a growing literature on CBPR (see the bibliography on CBPR and Ethics, prepared by Julie Hollowell and Gregory Carr, in the Resources section of the IPinCH website under Bibliographies: http://www.sfu.ca/ipinch/outputs_resources/resources/bibliographies).
Key features of this methodology include:
- a collaborative approach engaging the community in all aspects of the research process—from development of research questions and research design to conducting the research, designing outputs, and disseminating results;
- research goals prioritized to meet community needs and to effect direct community benefits; and
- projects that:
- contribute to community capacity building and to sustainable and more equitable relations between the community and outside researchers;
- promote respect for local values; and
- help to address at the outset long-standing issues in conventional academic research relating to mistrust, inequity, and similar issues.
*Please note: The term "Commuity-based Initiative" (CBI) was developed during the 2009 IPinCH Ethics Workshop at the Prindle Center for Ethics, DePauw University, on the recommendation of Bonnie Newsom, co-developer of the CBI involving the Penobscot Nation. Other groups working with IPinCH have specified they have reasons for preferring the term "Case Study" (CS).
