Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 12 • Number 26 • 16th July 2008
WIPO Committee Reviews Recommendations on Development Agenda
The World Intellectual Property Organisation’s Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP) made progress last week in its negotiations on how to implement a set of 45 recommendations that are meant to make WIPO more development friendly. The CDIP, which is chaired by Ambassador Trevor Clarke (Barbados), will forward its recommended implementation activities to the WIPO General Assembly in September.
Although recent discussions on the implementation of WIPO’s Development Agenda have been marked by a general tone of consensus, last week’s five-day gathering, which was the second meeting of the committee, witnessed some foreseeable differences of perspectives in the areas of competition, flexibilities, public domain and intellectual property. There were also ongoing debates related to resources, implementation, time-frames, and evaluation.
The early part of the week was taken up with discussions of the relationship between the CDIP and WIPO’s Program and Budget Committee. No apparent resolution was reached on procedural issues in that regard.
But last week’s meeting was notable too for the growing consensus around a set of 19 recommendations that have been slated for immediate implementation. Those recommendations were chosen from the original list of 45 because they require relatively few human or financial resources, and thus can be put in place fairly quickly. Of those 19 measures, only one - recommendation number 12, which concerns technical assistance - was discussed at length at last week’s meeting. The CDIP also considered several of the remaining 26 recommendations, all of which would require explicit resource mandates, including many of the important Cluster B recommendations on norm-setting, flexibilities, public policy, and public domain.
Some of the most heated substantive discussions between developing and developed member states concerned WIPO’s proposed implementation of Cluster B recommendation 22, which states that “WIPO’s norm setting activities should be supportive of the development goals agreed within the UN system, including those contained in the Millennium Declaration.”
Member states affiliated with the Friends of Development, a coalition of developing countries, expressed their concern that unless the CDIP worked more actively with other parts of WIPO, the development dimension of the organisation would be marginalised within CDIP and not mainstreamed across all WIPO committees. For example, South Africa called for WIPO to conduct a study on the linkages between intellectual property and the Millennium Development Goals. Brazil seconded that request, and also asked the WIPO Secretariat to consider the possibility of holding a global forum on intellectual property and development.
Various developing countries, including Argentina and Indonesia, stressed that the CDIP should communicate directly with other WIPO committees on development issues. They further called for on-going assessments of how the recommendations are implemented. Ambassador Clarke stated that recommendation 22 has the support of all members, but also that he could not initiate formal correspondence with chairs of other WIPO committees.
Member states also discussed at length Cluster B, recommendation 23, which states that WIPO should “consider how to better promote pro competitive [intellectual property] licensing practices, particularly with a view to fostering creativity, innovation and the transfer and dissemination of technology to interested countries, in particular developing countries and LDCs.” During the discussions, reference was made to open source and creative commons licensing, as well as to WIPO’s Successful Technology Licensing website. Several developing countries, including Indonesia, requested that WIPO’s proposed implementation of the recommendation be expanded to cover patent and not just copyright licensing. This was supported generally and ultimately endorsed by the chair.
One interesting feature of the meeting was the US’ insistence that WIPO’s recommended activities for Cluster B recommendations “must be based on sound and expert opinions, balanced and public policy neutral.” Variations of this statement were repeated with respect to several of the proposed Cluster B work program items.
The final issue considered at length by the committee was the implementation of Cluster A, recommendation 12. That proposed measure, which is contained within the first group of 19 recommendations for immediate implementation, states that WIPO should “mainstream development considerations” into its technical assistance activities. In discussions on this recommendation, Brazil and India emphasised that the original purpose of the Development Agenda was to ensure that developing countries are able to fully benefit from the intellectual property system. France and the US raised questions regarding language on flexibilities in the proposed implementation activities. With regard to technical assistance, Jamaica’s delegate, Symone Betton, said that “one aspect [of flexibilities] that should be captured should not be to just to implement the public policies but to develop public policies.”
Discussions on the final day of the meeting almost entirely focused on a revision of the chair’s proposed summary. France, on behalf of the European Union, decried the fact that the recommendations did not take into account the human and financial resources that would be necessary for implementation. Several EU and Group B member states focused on the question of the budgetary process and the relationship with the WIPO Program and Budget Committee that had preoccupied the CDIP in the earlier part of the week.
Pakistan, on behalf of the Asian Group, expressed its concern that there was a lack of clarity in the roles and responsibilities of the various committees and divisions of WIPO on recommendations of CDIP. The Asian Group also questioned how the recommendations would be implemented, as well as the methods with which that implementation would be monitored and evaluated.
The African Group, as articulated by South Africa, stated that it wanted the recommendations to be implemented as soon as possible; that it would like to send a clear signal in that respect to the next General Assembly; and that it wanted to find and make available sufficient human and financial resources for the implementation of the recommendations.
Following consultations with the regional coordinators, the meeting reconvened on the basis of a revised chair’s summary. Substantive comments at that point were limited. Indonesia stated that it was concerned about the time-frame for discussion of coordination with other committees at the next CDIP meeting (paragraph 10 of the revised chair’s summary), and France asked twice for a financial summary document, which was distributed at the end of the meeting.
Another point of debate was whether the term “Development Agenda,” which was referred to in the revised chair’s summary, should be replaced by CDIP. The chair acquiesced to this request, which was put forward by the US but resisted by Brazil. US delegate David Morfesi stated that the term “Development Agenda” had negative connotations because of all the past debates and should at this point be “forward looking.”
At the close of the meeting, the chair recognised several delegates for their continuous involvement since the WIPO Development Agenda was initiated by the Friends of Development in 2004, to its current form as CDIP. These include Guilherme Patriota from Brazil, David Morfesi from the US, and Mohinder S. Grover, a delegate from India.
ICTSD reporting.