Geneva Declaration on the Future of the World Intellectual Property Organisation

Launched in Geneva on 29 September, this declaration, which includes among its some 500 signatories, renowned scientists, economists, legal experts and public agenda groups, calls for a rethink of the current intellectual property regime of expanding monopoly privileges being promoted by WIPO, and advocates instead one that strikes a proper balance between the public domain and the realm of property.

While fully endorsing this Geneva Declaration, a number of organisations which question the term ‘intellectual property’ and whether WIPO is the proper body for alternative solutions have also issued a call for a ‘World Intellectual Wealth Organisation’ in its place (see box).

HUMANITY faces a global crisis in the governance of knowledge, technology and culture.  The crisis is manifest in many ways.

Without access to essential medicines, millions suffer and die;

Morally repugnant inequality of access to education, knowledge and technology undermines development and social cohesion;

Anticompetitive practices in the knowledge economy impose enormous costs on consumers and retard innovation;

Authors, artists and inventors face mounting barriers to follow-on innovation;

Concentrated ownership and control of knowledge, technology, biological resources and culture harm development, diversity and democratic institutions;

Technological measures designed to enforce intellectual property rights in digital environments threaten core exceptions in copyright laws for disabled persons, libraries, educators, authors and consumers, and undermine privacy and freedom;

Key mechanisms to compensate and support creative individuals and communities are unfair to both creative persons and consumers;

Private interests misappropriate social and public goods, and lock up the public domain.

At the same time, there are astoundingly promising innovations in information, medical and other essential technologies, as well as in social movements and business models. We are witnessing highly successful campaigns for access to drugs for AIDS, scientific journals, genomic information and other databases, and hundreds of innovative collaborative efforts to create public goods, including the Internet, the World Wide Web, Wikipedia, the Creative Commons, GNU Linux and other free and open software projects, as well as distance education tools and medical research tools. Technologies such as Google now provide tens of millions with incredible tools to find information. Alternative compensation systems have been proposed to expand access and interest in cultural works, while providing both artists and consumers with efficient and fair systems for compensation. There is renewed interest in compensatory liability, innovation prizes, or competitive intermediators, as models for economic incentives for science and technology that can facilitate sequential follow-on innovation and avoid monopolist abuses. In 2001, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) declared that member countries should ‘promote access to medicines for all’.

Humanity stands at a crossroads - a fork in our moral code and a test of our ability to adapt and grow. Will we evaluate, learn and profit from the best of these new ideas and opportunities, or will we respond to the most unimaginative pleas to suppress all of this in favour of intellectually weak, ideologically rigid, and sometimes brutally unfair and inefficient policies? Much will depend upon the future direction of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), a global body setting standards that regulate the production, distribution and use of knowledge.

A 1967 Convention sought to encourage creative activity by establishing WIPO to promote the protection of intellectual property. The mission was expanded in 1974, when WIPO became part of the United Nations, under an agreement that asked 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’.

As an intergovernmental organisation, WIPO embraced a culture of creating and expanding monopoly privileges, often without regard to consequences. The continuous expansion of these privileges and their enforcement mechanisms has led to grave social and economic costs, and has hampered and threatened other important systems of creativity and innovation. WIPO needs to enable its members to understand the real economic and social consequences of expanded intellectual property, and the importance of striking a balance between the public domain and the realm of property. The mantra that ‘more is better’ or that ‘less is never good’ is disingenuous and dangerous - and has greatly compromised the standing of WIPO, especially among experts in intellectual property policy. WIPO must change.

We are not asking that WIPO abandon every effort to promote the protection of intellectual property. We are not asking WIPO to abandon all efforts to harmonise or improve these laws. We are asking WIPO to work from the broader framework described in the 1974 agreement with the UN, and to take a more balanced and realistic view of the benefits and limitations of intellectual property rights as a tool, but not the only tool, for supporting creative intellectual activity.

WIPO must also express a more balanced view of the relative benefits of harmonisation and diversity, and seek to impose global conformity only when it truly benefits all of humanity. A ‘one size fits all’ approach that embraces the highest levels of intellectual property protection for everyone leads to ludicrous outcomes for countries that are struggling to meet the most basic needs of their citizens.

The WIPO General Assembly has now been asked to establish a development agenda. The initial proposal, first put forth by the governments of Argentina and Brazil, would profoundly refashion the WIPO agenda, toward development and new approaches to support innovation and creativity. This is a long-overdue and much-needed first step toward a new WIPO mission and work programme. It is not perfect. The WIPO Convention should formally recognise the need to take into account the ‘development needs of its Member States, particularly developing countries and least-developed countries’, as has been proposed. But this does not go far enough. The Convention should not call on WIPO to ‘promote the protection of intellectual property’. Better expressions of the mission can be found, including the requirement in the 1974 UN/WIPO agreement that WIPO ‘promote creative intellectual activity and facilitate the transfer of technology related to industrial property’. The function of WIPO should not only be to promote ‘efficient protection’ and ‘harmonisation’ of intellectual property laws, but to formally embrace the notions of balance and appropriateness.

The proposal for a development agenda has created the first real opportunity to debate the future of WIPO. It is not only an agenda for developing countries. It is an agenda for everyone, North and South. It must move forward. All nations and people must join and expand the debate on the future of WIPO.

There must be a moratorium on new treaties and harmonisation of standards that expand and strengthen monopolies and further restrict access to knowledge. For generations WIPO has responded primarily to the narrow concerns of powerful publishers, pharmaceutical companies, plant breeders and other commercial interests. Recently, WIPO has become more open to civil society and public interest groups, and this is welcome. But WIPO must now address the substantive concerns of these groups, such as the protection of consumer rights and human rights. Long-neglected concerns of the poor, the sick, the visually impaired and others must be given priority.

The proposed development agenda points in the right direction. By abandoning efforts to adopt new treaties on substantive patent law, broadcasters’ rights and databases, WIPO will create space to address far more urgent needs.

The proposals for the creation of standing committees and working groups on technology transfer and development are welcome. WIPO should also consider the creation of one or more bodies to systematically address the control of anticompetitive practices and the protection of consumer rights.

We support the call for a Treaty on Access to Knowledge and Technology. The Standing Committee on Patents and the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights should solicit views from member countries and the public on elements of such a treaty.

The WIPO technical assistance programmes must be fundamentally reformed. Developing countries must have the tools to implement the WTO Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health, and ‘use to the full’ the flexibilities in the TRIPS to ‘promote access to medicines for all’. WIPO must help developing countries address the limitations and exceptions in patent and copyright laws that are essential for fairness, development and innovation. If the WIPO Secretariat cannot understand the concerns and represent the interests of the poor, the entire technical assistance programme should be moved to an independent body that is accountable to developing countries.

Enormous differences in bargaining power lead to unfair outcomes between creative individuals and communities (both modern and traditional) and the commercial entities that sell culture and knowledge goods. WIPO must honour and support creative individuals and communities by investigating the nature of relevant unfair business practices, and promote best practice models and reforms that protect creative individuals and communities in these situations, consistent with norms of the relevant communities.

Delegations representing the WIPO member states and the WIPO Secretariat have been asked to choose a future. We want a change of direction, new priorities, and better outcomes for humanity. We cannot wait for another generation. It is time to seize  the  moment  and  move  forward.        

COVER 9 (BOX)

Towards a ‘World Intellectual Wealth Organisation’

Supporting the Geneva Declaration

THE Geneva Declaration [1] is an impressive step towards the creation of a broad coalition of people, organisations and countries [2] demanding that the international community re-think the goals and mechanisms for awarding monopoly control over different kinds of knowledge. It offers many constructive, concrete suggestions for changes in WIPO goals, policies and priorities, and provides ample and insightful arguments for redesign of the copyright and patent bargains to better serve the public interest of all of humankind.

We are convinced that new answers sometimes require new questions, not more careful repetition of old questions. A World Intellectual Property Organisation will always, understandably, lean towards applying the pre-selected tool-set of monopolisation that it refers to as Intellectual Property; a term that we find to be ideologically charged and dangerously oblivious to the significant differences that exist between the many areas of law that it tries to subsume.

While it may look at better, possibly more socially sustainable ways of granting ownership-like monopolies over different forms of knowledge, WIPO will not have an easy time looking for alternative solutions. WIPO is not what we need.

We need a World Intellectual Wealth Organisation, dedicated to the research and promotion of novel and imaginative ways to encourage the production and dissemination of knowledge. Granting limited monopolies and limited control over some kinds of knowledge may be part of this new organisation’s tool-set, but not the only one, and maybe not even the most important one.

We endorse and support the Geneva Declaration, and invite its drafters, signatories, and the United Nations to start thinking now not only about what the role of WIPO should be, but rather what kind of organisation we need in its place.            

References

[1] Geneva Declaration: http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/genevadeclaration.html

[2]        Proposal by Argentina and Brazil for the establishment of a development agenda for WIPO: http://www.wipo.int/documents/en/document/govbody/wo_gb_ga/pdf/wo_ga_31_11.pdf

Signatories

Organisations

ANSOL - Associa‡ao Nacional para o Software Livre

APRIL

Asociaci¢n Software Libre y Patrimonio Intelectual Libre

Association for Free Software (AFFS)

Assoli - Associazione Software Libero

Free Software Foundation Europe

Free Software Foundation, United States

Fundacion Conocimiento Libre

GNU-Darwin Distribution

Hipatia

La Fundacion Via Libre

Linux User Group Bozen-Bolzano-Bulsan

Movimento Costozero

Netzwerk Neue Medien

Stichting NLnet

Stichting Vrijschrift

UKUUG - the UK’s Unix and Open Systems User Group

UN WSIS - Civil Society Patents, Copyright, Trademarks (PCT) Working Group

Verein zur Furderung Freier Software

WilhelmTux

Ynternet.org - Free communication for communities

Individuals

Alessandro Rubini

Alex Hudson

Beatriz Busaniche

BenoŒt Sibaud

Bernhard Reiter

Carlos Atarés

Christian Selig

David Ayers

Diego Saravia

Enrique A. Chaparro

Federico Heinz

Francis Muguet

Frédéric Couchet

Georg Greve

Graham Seaman

Henrik Sandklef

Jeroen Dekkers

Jonas Oberg

Jonathan Grant

Lars Noodén

Malla Pollack

Marc Schaefer

Maria Jesus Ruiz

Marie-Magdeleine Bechier

Markus Beckedahl

Matthias Kirschner

Michael L. Love

MJ Ray

Pablo Mach¢n

Patrick Ohnewein

Reinhard Muller

Richard Stallman

Rik van Riel

Russell McOrmond

Sébastien Dinot

Simone Piccardi

Stefano Barale

Stefano Maffulli

Théo Bondolfi

Volker Dormeyer