NGOs support a development agenda for WIPO

Civil society organisations  have come out in support of the proposal by Argentina and Brazil for the establishment of a development agenda within WIPO.

Kanaga Raja

AN NGO statement, signed by over 25 organisations and distributed at a media briefing in Geneva on 29 September, urged developing countries and NGOs to support the move by Argentina and Brazil for a development agenda at the WIPO General Assembly, describing it as an unparalleled opportunity for all developing countries and development-oriented NGOs to put on WIPO’s agenda the issue of development.

Additionally, another group of about 500 eminent persons have called on WIPO to change course and incorporate economic, social and cultural development within its mission, instead of pushing for stronger forms of intellectual property rights.

The group, comprising scientists, economists, legal experts, consumer advocates and health activists including two Nobel laureates, made this call in the Geneva Declaration on the Future of the World Intellectual Property Organisation. The Declaration was drafted to support the Brazil/Argentina proposal for a development agenda.

The Declaration advances a global perspective, whereby innovators, creators and developing countries have a common interest in exploring new and promising forms of cooperation. It signals the formation of a new coalition of individuals and public-interest NGOs from both the North and the South which seeks to put on the table alternative proposals to foster creative endeavour.

The Declaration states in part: ‘We do not ask that WIPO abandon efforts to promote the appropriate protection of intellectual property ... But we insist that WIPO ... take a more balanced and realistic view of the social benefits and costs of intellectual property rights as a tool, but not the only tool, for supporting creative intellectual activity.’

The Declaration refers to the 1974 agreement with the UN establishing WIPO as a specialised agency of the UN system, which requests WIPO to take ‘appropriate action to promote creative intellectual activity’ and facilitate the transfer of technology to developing countries, ‘in order to accelerate economic, social and cultural development’.

The signatories of the Declaration believe that a more appropriate expression of WIPO’s mission is found in the 1974 UN/WIPO Agreement, which calls for WIPO to ‘promote creative intellectual activity and facilitate the transfer of technology related to industrial property’.

Right balance

At the 29 September media briefing, Martin Khor, Director of the Third World Network, referred to the recent Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue meeting on 13-14 September, where concerns emerged among many NGOs as well as scientists, lawyers, librarians and software developers on the future direction of WIPO, and out of this had emerged the Geneva Declaration. (Reports on the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue meeting appear elsewhere in this issue.)

Khor said that the signatories of the Declaration were not against intellectual property rights altogether but were for appropriate intellectual property rights that strike the right balance between rights holders and the rights of the public such as consumers of essential goods like medicines, consumers of information as well as other users such as small and medium-sized enterprises in developing countries.

Khor added that a major milestone was the TRIPS Agreement of the WTO, which had jacked up standards of intellectual property rights. Today many developing countries are concerned that they have to adhere to patent or copyright standards that are excessively high. Even the developed countries themselves did not have to subscribe to such high standards when they were at their early stage of development, Khor stressed.

As such, problems have emerged with regard to access to medicines, as well as traditional knowledge with respect to local communities involving biodiversity that has been inappropriately patented, Khor said.

While many people involved in intellectual property have been focusing on the WTO and TRIPS, there is increasing awareness that there have been new developments in WIPO that may further tilt the balance in favour of monopoly privileges of a few and against the public interest, Khor added.                                    

Kanaga Raja is a researcher with the Third World Network. The above article first appeared in the South-North Development Monitor (SUNS - issue no. 5656).