WIPO

The World Intellectual Property Organization has played a fundamentally negative role in its extension of IP Maximalism, i.e. the belief that the strongest possible IP regime is the only alternative. But in recent years, a strong reform movement, including the A2K Access to Knowledge movement, has made its influence felt. A key part of the reform has been the Brazil Argentina Proposals for the WIPO Development Agenda. As a result of the stronger influence of the reform movement, strong IP advocates are relying more on TRIPS.

This context is very well explained by Becky Hogge in Open Democracy, which we are citing extensively below.

The Role of WIPO

By Becky Hogge at http://www.opendemocracy.net/media/hogge_wipo_4431.jsp

"WIPO was formed in the late 1960s, replacing the bureau that administered the Paris Convention (on patents) and the Berne Convention (on copyright). These conventions date back to the late nineteenth century, when - according to the WIPO website - "the need for international protection of intellectual property became evident [as] foreign exhibitors refused to attend the International Exhibition of Inventions in Vienna in 1873 because they were afraid their ideas would be stolen and exploited commercially in other countries."

According to the convention that established WIPO in 1967, the organisation exists to draft international standards for the protection and enforcement of intellectual-property rights. But in terms of development, what this mandate ignores is that, prior to the 1873 Vienna exhibition, countries had benefited from pirating one another's ideas rather rampantly. It was only when they got to this later stage in history that intellectual-property protection became needed. Seen in this context, promoting industrial and post-industrial standards of intellectual-property protection across the developing world doesn't look very logical." (http://www.opendemocracy.net/media/hogge_wipo_4431.jsp)

The WIPO IP Reform efforts

The main issues that the critics are raising against the current WIPO-led intellectual property regime are that:

1) the IPR system is hampering the free flow of information, 2) raising the cost of computer software, 3) hampering scientists from advancing research, 4) reducing the public's access to information 5) raising the cost of medicines.

Becky Hogge gives the following status report on reform efforts at http://www.opendemocracy.net/media/hogge_wipo_4431.jsp (3/2007)

Until recently, WIPO had more or less succeeded in ignoring this reality. But then, in late February 2007, something wonderful happened. Member-state negotiators tasked with reviewing the organisation's support to the developing world, made their first set of "development agenda" recommendations. (Talks had been going on since 2004, when Argentina and Brazil put forward the idea that WIPO needed to change.) One of the key recommendations is that the organisation consider the value of the public domain - the body of knowledge which is not protected by intellectual-property law - as it goes about drafting international standards on intellectual property. In the future, WIPO is to "deepen the analysis of the implication and benefits of a rich and accessible public domain".

The scene has been set, then, for a full debate on just how useful strong intellectual property is for development. And although it has taken over two years, one senses that many delegates from the global south, not to mention pro-reform observer NGOs, did not expect such an encouraging result so early. "WIPO and its member states have done something very positive, and surprising - both because it signals important reforms and because it happened with very strong support from all of the WIPO members, including the United States and members of Europe", wrote James Love, head of the Consumer Project on Technology and a veteran of the WIPO negotiating table, in the online Huffington Post.

Overall, 24 recommendations - distilled from over 40 proposals during the February negotiations - will be put to the WIPO general assembly come September. A further set of 71 proposals will be discussed in June, covering education and access to knowledge issues in more depth. But in terms of worldwide reform, these future hurdles to a more sensible outlook on development and IP are coupled with even higher barriers from other, more powerful, international intellectual-property agreements." (http://www.opendemocracy.net/media/hogge_wipo_4431.jsp)

Sidestepping reform through TRIPS

By Becky Hogge at http://www.opendemocracy.net/media/hogge_wipo_4431.jsp

"In the years since Argentina and Brazil proposed the development agenda, many strong-IP advocates left the table. Disconcerted by the power of developing countries to block strong-IP proposals in a forum based on decision-making by consensus, these developed countries moved their negotiating muscle elsewhere. Specifically, they went to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was soon to become the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and to its Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).

The TRIPS accord, which came into force on 1 January 1995, sets out minimal standards for IP enforcement. Although the compliance period for these standards has been extended to 2016 for the world's least-developed countries, such standards threaten, nevertheless, to prevent the developing world from enjoying the free flow of ideas and their expression which so aided today's developed nations during the west's industrial age.

Combined with the trend towards extension of IPs in term and scope, TRIPS threatens to sentence the developing world to perpetual bondage by the developed one. Indeed, as Andrew Gowers put it to me on the day in late 2006 that he published his review into British intellectual property law: "[I]f you look at the whole swathe of developing countries, from the successful ones to the poor ones, does the one-size-fits-all approach [compelling adoption of an industrial nation's standard of IP protection] really work? The answer is, it makes no sense." (http://www.opendemocracy.net/media/hogge_wipo_4431.jsp)

More Information

Here's a vivid account of the culture clash when reformers started participating in the WIPO process, with Becky Hogge interviewing Cory Doctorow at http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-8-40-2452.jsp

Short intro to the main reform issues expressed against the current IP regime at http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/2312.html

Also check the following entries:

1. A Manifesto on WIPO and the Future of Intellectual Property
2. Brazil Argentina Proposals for the WIPO Development Agenda
3. A2K Access to Knowledge
4. Access to Knowledge in a Network Society
5. Geneva Declaration, declaration on the future of WIPO which calls on WIPO to focus more on the needs of developing countries