Where does one begin to discuss a tour-de-force? Perhaps the best place is the beginning. After the title page, the editor, Joseph Henry Vogel, dedicates the anthology to Darrell Posey who died in 2001 at the age of 53. Posey was a pioneer in the interdisciplinary analysis of “intellectual property rights” (IPR) and “traditional knowledge” (TK). He would often intervene at the Conference of the Parties (COP) during the public commentary and introduce himself “Darrell Posey, and I am proud to say I am not a lawyer.” Although the corpus of Posey's work is only mentioned briefly in the volume, his spirit is there on every page, especially his humor. As Posey showed us, “bioprospecting, intellectual property, and the public domain” are not and cannot be the exclusive domain of the lawyers. The proposed museum is the latest attempt to broaden the dialog by creating a place which, as the subtitle of the anthology indicates, will also be process and a philosophy.

Where does one go next in discussing this roller-coaster ride of an introduction and six chapters, crisply written and packed with original ideas? In his capacity as editor, Vogel provides an easy solution to this seemingly impossible problem. It is the same one he uses to weave the chapters together into a meaningful whole: an interloper. I will review the anthology by focusing on how the interloper interlopes in each chapter.