[A2k] WIPO Accreditation issues and helping member states prepare for DA meetings

[James Love]

Ok, based on communications from WIPO this morning, this is the best
information we have on the WIPO development agenda accreditation issues.

 > 1.  Will you permit ad hoc observers to be accredited?


    No.

 > 2.  Will there be caps on delegations?


     Probably, but no one knows if there will be, or what the caps will be.

 > 3.  Will WIPO undertake any measures to ensure that NGO participation,
 > including speaking, will have any balance between right-owner and
consumer perspectives?


     No
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1.  My advice on accreditation concerns.....

I think a distributed response is best, with each NGO or constituency
circulating its own letters for signatures on the accreditation issue,
directed as various open letters to the WIPO member states, asking that
they intervene to ensure that NGOs working on development, free/open
software, Access to Medicine, Access to Knowledge (a2k), and other
relevant issues be allowed to participate in the WIPO meetings on the
development agenda. It would be good to have some low level coordination
of these efforts so we can keep WIPO and member country delegates aware
of what is being done.  Given my crazy travel schedule for March, best
to coordinate with thiru@cptech.org, who runs the CPTech Geneva office.

2.  My advice on helping members states prepare for the DA meetings.

Member states are having to scramble to get ready for the meetings of
April 11.  It will be *EXTREMELY IMPORTANT* that various groups get some
paper together fairly quickly for the delegates... Best if this can be
put together by early or mid March, so the info can be processed in
capitals.

Basically, civil society NGOs/groups need to put on paper their advice
for member states on the DA, and to round up signatures endorsing the
positions.

Right-owners are now in FULL MOBILIZATION on the WIPO development
agenda.  The only thing I have seen like this are the campaigns relating
to the 1998-1999 WHO resolution on trade and public health and the 2001
WTO Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health.  Like then, the
right-owners effort is closely coordinated behind the scenes, with
enormous cooperation and pressure from the US and other developed
counties.  The US has formed an inter-agency task force to attack the
DA.  It would be good to have some details on the EC organization on
this.  I assume the worst, but there is a new Commission, so we need to
check.   Note that the US, the EC and European governments will put huge
pressure on developing country governments to abandon/isolate Brazil or
India on this, which is exactly what happened on the WTO negotiations
over paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration, and which was a disaster.

It appears as though the WIPO secretariat is entirely committed to
defending corporate right-owners and entirely trying to undermine
consumer interests.  I would love to be wrong about this, but one has to
face the evidence we have seen so far, including for example the recent
USPTO and Casablanca meetings, and the rejection of applications for ad
hoc observer status to groups like ICSTD and others, and the lack of a
real dialogue with civil society NGOs.

   Jamie

--
James Love, Director, CPTech, http://www.cptech.org

Consumer Project on Technology in Washington, DC
PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036, USA
Tel.:  1.202.387.8030, fax: 1.202.234.5176

Consumer Project on Technology in Geneva
1 Route des  Morillons, CP 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 791 6727

Mobile +1.202.361.3040
james.love@cptech.org