Two on Future of WIPO

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Random-bits] FT on Future of WIPO: Clash likely on
intellectual property rights
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 20:22:03 -0400
From: James Love <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]


Clash likely on intellectual property rights

By Frances Williams in Geneva
Published: September 14 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 14
2004 03:00

The stage is set for a clash over the future of international 
intellectual property protection, with Brazil and Argentina
planning to  call for a "development agenda" at the World
Intellectual Property  Organisation's annual meeting later this
month.


Intellectual property protection is a means of promoting
innovation and the transfer and dissemination of technology and
"cannot be seen as an  end in itself", the proposal by the two
countries says.

Among their more controversial suggestions are negotiation of a
treaty  to promote developing-country access to knowledge and
technology; work  on collaborative information-sharing mechanisms
to stimulate innovation;  and an amendment to Wipo's constitution
stressing the need to take the development concerns into account.

Brazil has been in the vanguard of moves to ensure intellectual
property rights enshrined in international pacts do not override
public interest  or development needs. This reflects its domestic
agenda, which includes promotion of generic drugs and open-source
software.

Brazilian negotiators played a key role in drafting a landmark
World  Trade Organisation agreement in 2001 that affirms
developing countries'  right to give public health needs priority
over drug patent protection.

More generally, Brazil has led resistance to US attempts to
impose ever-higher standards of protection on developing
countries, notably through bilateral trade agreements.

Supporters of a Wipo development agenda say the United Nations
agency is dominated by industrialised countries and multinational
companies with a vested interest in strengthening the existing
property rights system to the detriment of poor nations.

"It's about time we had a debate in Wipo", said one Latin
American official. "Developed countries are aggressively pushing
their agenda. Developing countries should be pushing theirs."

Wipo's critics discount claims that the organisation has become
more development-friendly. "Wipo is still pushing a strong rights
paradigm," Jamie Love, director of the US-based Consumer Project
on Technology,  said yesterday at a conference in Geneva on
Wipo's future organised by  the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue,
a consumer lobby group.

Mr Love and Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor
who chairs a non-governmental organisation known as the Creative
Commons,  used the conference to announce a new developing
nations copyright  licence that will allow copyright holders to
grant royalty-free use of  their work in poor countries.

Creative Commons has already introduced alternative copyright
licences  in the US, Japan, Brazil and some European Union member
states.

These can be used by musicians, writers, film makers and others
to  reserve some, but not all, rights on their work, as
conventional  copyright does, in order to disseminate it more
widely. www.wipo.org http://creativecommons.org

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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Random-bits] Dugie S. on Future of WIPO meeting
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 20:18:02 -0400
From: James Love <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]


in Washington Internet Daily (Sept 14, 2004)

Consumer Groups Press WIPO to Shift Focus from IP Rights to Human
Rights

GENEVA -- The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
found itself on the defensive today as speakers at the
Transatlantic Consumer Dialog (TACD) here debated its future.
Faced with accusations that the organization -- which became part
of the United Nations in 1974 -- has sided with intellectual
property (IP) rights to the exclusion of human rights, several
WIPO officials said they’re listening to the increasing calls for
a more balanced approach. And while some speakers agreed WIPO is
making an effort to address their concerns, they said any changes
so far amount to little.

WIPO’s stated mission is to promote IP. But as a U.N. agency, its
responsibility is to take appropriate action to promote
intellectual creativity not IP, said Sisule Musungu, head of the
Kenyan South Centre’s program on international trade &
development. WIPO doesn’t appear to act according to its U.N.
mandate, but according to its original mission to foster IP, he
said.

The stated mission is both “right and good” but it has failed,
said Stanford U. law prof. Lawrence Lessig. If IP promotion were
a campaign and WIPO its campaign manager, he said, it would lose.
IP is more contested and criticized today than at any time
before, he said, because: (1) There’s too much influence by IP
“maximalists,” special interests that push for IP term
extensions, for instance, to the detriment of others’ rights. (2)
We’re obsessed with the conception of IP as it was -- automatic
and longlived -- when technology has fundamentally changed the
use of creative works. (3) Lawyers’ characterization of IP as a
“religion,” not an economic issue. What’s needed, he said, is
substantial reform that would require every regulation to be
tested under the principle of economic efficiency, he said.
Properly balanced, IP promotes the public good, Lessig said. But,
whether by WIPO’s fault or not, IP doesn’t do that, and is now
considered a tool of the rich to impose their power on the poor.

WIPO’s dossier is “dodgy,” said John Sulston, founding dir. of
the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (U.K.). Its mission statement
mistakenly equates “works of the human spirit” with IP, he said.
The past 25 years, the funding of discovery has been directly
tied to its application, and WIPO has been required to follow the
agenda of those who “perverted the course of scientific
discovery.” Instead, Sulston said, its mission should be as a
democratic govt. balancing everyone’s interests.

A European Commission (EC) official backed WIPO, saying its
primary mission is as a lawmaking body in the field of copyright
protection. There is “unfinished business” in WIPO’s digital
agenda, including the issues of protection for broadcasters and
the need for IP rights for sui generis databases, said Rogier
Wezenbeek, of the Internal Market directorate-gen. Copyright &
neighboring rights unit. Moreover, he said, there’s been no new
copyright treaty since 1976. With a growing number of
international organizations discussing copyright, it’s of “prime
importance” that WIPO’s expertise remain in the lead, he said.

WIPO officials stressed they’re heeding calls for change. There’s
“diversity and inclusiveness” in the activities within WIPO, said
Anthony Taubman, head of the traditional knowledge div. Whatever
one’s view of WIPO, he said, it’s engaged in a wider debate on IP
than many believe. Taubman disputed critics who say WIPO isn’t
listening, citing its 6-year effort to address issues surrounding
protection of traditional knowledge. Despite activities that have
created the foundation for a practical debate on the need to
protect such knowledge, and its raising the political status of
the issues, he said, WIPO has been accused on being too
theoretical and academic and “all talk and no action.” That’s not
the WIPO he knows, Taubman said. And in a later panel on WIPO and
the Information Society, Richard Owens, dir.-copyright,
e-commerce, technology & management div., said much of what has
been written about the TACD conference isn’t accurate. “We’re in
complete receiver mode,” Owens said. Just because WIPO isn’t
speaking out on issues doesn’t mean it’s not thinking about them,
he said. WIPO is in the early stages of its new relationship with
civil society -- consumer, human rights and other groups -- and
its agenda is driven by the concerns of its member states, some
of which are developing countries. “We’re open and we’re ready
for change,” Owens said.

WIPO deserves an “A” for the spirit in which it worked with the
TACD on this week’s conference, said James Love, Consumer Project
on Technology Exec. Dir., at a news briefing. WIPO knows it has
to “wean itself away” from merely protecting rights-owners, he
said. To its credit, Love said, it deserves high marks for
opening its doors to nongovernmental organizations, and for its
willingness to engage in TACD’s issues.

But Brazil and Argentina recently threw down the gauntlet over
WIPO’s mission, Love said. The countries have proposed that WIPO
set a “development agenda” and has asked that member states
consider it at their assemblies in 2 weeks. The big questions are
whether the Secretariat will permit the proposal to be debated as
a separate agenda item, and whether the U.S. and EU will oppose
it, he said. “We’re in a fight about what this UN agency is all
about,” Love said -- Dugie Standeford

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