South Centre/CIEL Ip Quarterly Update: First Quarter 2004
by SOUTH CENTRE & CIEL
INTRODUCTION
1. Developing countries face complex challenges in the evolving scenario of international intellectual property policy-making. Multiple fronts of discussions and negotiations require a coordination of strategies and positions that is not always easy to achieve. Nonetheless, since the shift in fora has been carefully designed by developed countries to take advantage of these difficulties and thus attempt to circumvent the options, flexibilities, and unresolved issues present at the multilateral level, it is crucial to develop a global view of international intellectual property standard-setting and to take the larger context into consideration during any negotiation or discussion.
2. The present overview is intended to facilitate a broader perspective of international intellectual property negotiations by providing a summary of relevant developments in multilateral, plurilateral, and bilateral fora. Moreover, the overview will focus on a significant topic in the intellectual property and development discussions, in this case non-violation complaints, to demonstrate the importance of following developments in different fora and the risks of lack of coordination between the various negotiations. Thus, Section II of the present note will analyze the treatment of non-violation complaints in bilateral and regional trade agreements and the concerns it raises for on-going discussions at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Then, Section III will provide a brief factual update of intellectual property-related developments in a number of different fora. Similar updates will be made available by the South Centre and the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) to developing country delegates and their capitals on a quarterly basis and may also be more widely circulated when appropriate .