13 July 2009 @ 8:08 by 
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is to hold, today and tomorrow (13th and 14th July 2009), a major international conference on intellectual property and public policy issues. It promises to be quite an event, a first in many ways. According to the initial list of participants, more than 600 people are registered for the conference with approximately 192 of these being government officials, 38 being representatives of intergovernmental organisations and 82 from NGOs, civil society and industry groups that are observers to WIPO.
The conference idea arose out of the deliberations of the WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (SCP) which for the last four years has been struggling to find consensus on priority issues especially for norm-setting. Part of the reason for the challenges that have faced the committee relates to the increasing attention being paid by a number of countries and other stakeholders to broader public policy issues in IP discussions. This has resulted in questioning as to whether WIPO is addressing 21st Century issues or is still stuck in the 20th Century.
WIPO at the Centre: Coordinating or Controlling?
In 2005, I argued, in Rethinking Innovation, Development and Intellectual Property: WIPO and Beyond, that “Innovation, development, and intellectual property policy is just too important in today’s knowledge society to be left to the bureaucracies of intellectual property organisations such as WIPO or intellectual property offices at the country level… This in essence is why WIPO should not be the only, nor even the lead, UN agency dealing with intellectual property matters. Its lead function should remain in the technical areas required to effectively manage the implementation of patents, copyrights and other elements of an intellectual property regime. Deciding on the shape and structure of the regime, the detailed rules that shape it, the balance of interests to be met and the measures by which it is judged requires a far wider range of inputs than those from legal and technical groups that make up the intellectual property community and which dominate the practice of WIPO.” In addition, I argued then that those international organisations dealing with “health, food, education and the like should have the internal competence and ability to assess intellectual property rules and their impact on the fundamentals and then play a major role in promoting the kind of business regulation that will help meet their fundamental development aims.”
WIPO can play a useful coordinating role is dealing with or addressing the relationship between IP and a range of public policy issues. It would be dangerous, however, if WIPO was left alone to determine the rules that govern the relationship between those public policy issues and IP. This conference will be an interesting indicator as to whether WIPO will coordinate or control the agenda going forward. The heads of a range of other UN agencies, most notably the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), will be speaking and it will be interesting to hear what they think their organisations’ roles are on IP related issues. One also hopes that while this is a conference organised by WIPO the discussions and debate will offer ideas for agendas in other key international organisations and that it will be seen as further evidence of why IP policy should be determined by a much larger group of stakeholders at country level than is currently the case today.
Some Panels to Watch
The conference programme is quite rich, though looking at speakers one may be slightly disappointed. Not many of those who have contributed most to bringing the public policy debate to WIPO and other international organisations appear on the programme. The original draft programme was a much richer programme in terms of the experience, knowledge and expertise. The exclusion of parallel sessions as had originally been envisaged also robed the conference of the opportunity to hear and record many more experts and commentators. Nevertheless, I hope that each of the speakers understands the importance of this conference and will rise to the task.
Lively debate should be expected on all the panels but there are some panels which will be particularly interesting to watch. These include: the panels on climate change and IP (all on 13th July); the Margaret Chan and Pascal Lamy panel on Strengthening Multilateral Cooperation on IP and Public Health; the panel on Innovation Models to Meet the Challenges of Neglected Diseases; and the panel on Patents and Strategies for Food Security.
I think you make a very interesting point here! to mention/add to this, in a paper I recently wrote titled Sub-Saharan Africa, Education and The Knowledge divide: Copyright Law A Barrier to Information. Which focused on copyright and copyright-related issues, I made the point that “Over the last few decades, “…Copyright has emerged as one of the most important means of regulating the international flow of ideas and knowledge-based products.” At the same time it has also increased concerns over the true functions of intellectual property rights and the various problems associated with it.
Although we are currently witnessing the emergence of a new global “information society,” which in its essence is changing the way people live, learn and work, and is bringing knowledge and its myriad applications to many millions of people. The stark reality is that even now, there still remains a large amount of world’s people that are untouched by this revolution, with most of those people residing in less developed countries.
In a 100 page report, recently published by the IPR Commission on,’ Intellectual Property rights, the Internet and Copyright.’ Legitimate concerns into the relationship between copyright, ‘education’ and the ‘global spread’ of ‘knowledge’ in poor and least developing countries was examined. In this IPR report, it was suggested that although not exclusively, due to copyright restrictions, “there is a kind of OPEC of knowledge in which a few rich nations [including the UK] have a great deal of control over how and where books are printed, the prices of printed materials, and the nature of the international exchange of knowledge.”
Copyright issues of this type and the rights and wrongs that flow from it, have been the subject of considerable debate for many years, and rightly so, given that access to and use of information, such as books and other learning materials are vital for educational development in the developed let alone the developing world. Yet set firmly within the context of the developing world, due to copyright restrictions costs for educational materials remain high, distribution limited, and educators continue to struggle to teach with limited or even no resources.”
In my discourse on the conventions at the international level, (which involve organisations such as WIPO) and barriers that the current copyright regime creates in the area of education and research, for people of lesser developed countries; I went on to conclude that “what emerges from these problems is that there needs to be a relationship of complete understanding and recognition that developed countries are the product of quite different histories and, among other things, to try and suppress all knowledge and understanding into the fitted straitjacket of a dominant western world -view is a wrong doing of the wealthy nations. If Governments and organisations really want to help these nations, there must be recognition that all knowledge products are not the same, and “while it may be justified to insist on commercial terms for Nintendo games, some flexibility for scientific materials, textbooks and the like is appropriate.” This profit oriented approach needs to be modified, It is only then and through an understanding of the interests of all parties concerned that a real and lasting solution to the above problems can be obtained.”