The issue of who owns the intellectual property rights to cultural works is an important one among Aboriginal communities.

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But Mr Tudor has a warning for firms that want to concentrate exclusively on the intellectual-property business: licensing usually works only alongside a basket of products or services.

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"It's too busy here to ask those kinds of questions, " she says, and then guesses that the Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences, where she works, would probably own the intellectual property.

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Through its standard-setting action, UNESCO works towards universal agreements on the ethical, normative and intellectual issues of our time.

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But purchasers of copyrighted works have rights too, provided they acquire those works legitimately and use them in a manner respectful of the intellectual property they contain.

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The UNESCO Art Collection was initiated with the construction of UNESCO building, and it brings together works of art from across the world as a symbol of intellectual and moral solidarity and as a means to deepen it.

UNESCO: Irina Bokova and Austrian State Secretary Reinhold Lopatka celebrate the UNESCO Art Collection | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

It works with one or two startups at a time, helping them navigate intellectual property agreements with universities, giving them office space to work, lending them tools to prototype their medical devices and lending a hand with the management and administration of the startup.

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"If you're a big corporation and you normally pay for the use of these things, we will come after you, " says Kia Kamran, an attorney who works with Mr. Lashes on his clients' transaction matters and who also represents the intellectual property rights of the tattoo on former boxer Mike Tyson's face.

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