The Australian Attorney-General’s Department (AGD) has reported in its latest newsletter that the Working Group for Legal Experts on the Protection of Traditional Knowledge and Expressions of Culture recently met in the New Caledonian city of Noumea, to consider a draft model law on the subject. Convened by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), the group is described by the AGD as ‘the premier regional technical and development organisation of the Pacific’. Delegates from Fiji, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Vanuatu and Australia, as well as from the SPC, the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), met to discuss the model law, which would work as a beginning point from which nations could develop a new range of statutory rights for the protection of traditional knowledge owners. According to the AGD report, the draft model law will complement existing rights, and will ‘permit tradition-based creativity and innovation, including commercialisation’. The draft law will now be circulated to SPC member countries, who will be free to adopt or adapt it as desired.