[A2k] IP Watch: WIPO Committee Approves Proposals For Development Agenda

[David Tannenbaum]

23/2/2007
WIPO Committee Approves Proposals For Development Agenda

By William New
Two-and-a-half years after the introduction of proposals to make the
World Intellectual Property Organization more favourable to
developing countries, a preliminary agreement has been reached.

=93What we got was meaningful and balanced,=94 a Brazilian official said
afterward. =93So what we get in the next meeting becomes less of an
issue.=94 Brazil was one of the originators of the effort to bring a
greater development focus into WIPO.

WIPO members negotiated on 40 proposals on development in the
Provisional Committee on Proposals related to a WIPO Development
Agenda (PCDA), held from 19 to 23 February. By week=92s end, they had
compressed them into 24 agreed proposals. The next and final PCDA
meeting for this year will be held in June, and another 71 proposals
will be addressed. [Note: the six-page text of the agreement will be
available here by Monday]

=93We=92re satisfied we achieved a concrete resolution after two-and-a-
half years,=94 a US official said afterward. He attributed the outcome
to increased flexibility on the part of the proponents of WIPO
reform. This outcome fits with the United States=92 preference for
=93incremental=94 progress on a Development Agenda, he said.

Proposals include a variety of technical assistance approaches,
reinforce the participatory and member-driven nature of WIPO
rulemaking; urge preservation and study of the public domain; expand
WIPO=92s involvement in technology transfer, information and
communication technologies (including expanded activities in
addressing the digital divide) and access to knowledge; require
assessments, evaluation and impact studies; and mild reform of WIPO=92s
mandate and governance.

They also approved a proposal for WIPO =93to approach intellectual
property enforcement in the context of broader societal interests and
especially development-oriented concerns, with a view that =93the
protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights should
contribute to the promotion of technological innovation and to the
transfer and dissemination of technology, to the mutual advantage of
producers and users of technological knowledge and in a manner
conducive to social and economic welfare, and to a balance of rights
and obligations=92, in accordance with Article 7 of the TRIPS
Agreement. TRIPS is the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-
Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.

The remaining proposals will be more difficult to reach agreement on,
participants said. It was agreed that the next meeting will focus
only on the remaining proposals, and that outcome will be combined
with this one and passed on to the WIPO General Assembly, which meets
annually in September. The assembly would then take decisions on how
to proceed.

The proposal for a WIPO Development Agenda began with Argentina and
Brazil in 2004, and has been formally supported by 13 other Friends
of Development in meetings on the issue since then. Most of the more
substantive proposals of the Friends are in the second batch awaiting
negotiators in June.

General Assembly Chair Ambassador Enrique Manalo of the Philippines
helped the committee beforehand by grouping the proposals into
clusters by themes (IPW, WIPO, 16 February, 2007). Committee Chair
Trevor Clarke, ambassador of Barbados, had each WIPO regional group
plus the developed-country group take a cluster. The coordinators of
each group held lengthy closed consultations with other members
during the week and gradually refined the proposals. The coordinating
countries are listed at (IPW, WIPO, 22 February 2007).

Clarke said afterward that a =93tougher=94 meeting is expected in June.
It involves bigger reform issues such as ensuring that WIPO=92s
legislative advice to developing and least-developed countries takes
into account relevant flexibilities, reflecting the public interest
in WIPO=92s work, and ensuring that WIPO treaties have preserved space
for public policy formation. He said he suggested to coordinators
that they meet with him before the June meeting. By the meeting
adjournment only the English language proposal text was finished. The
WIPO secretariat will circulate a draft report of the meeting by 5
April and members will have until 20 April to comment on it.

Clarke suggested that the General Assembly mandate does not require
that all items in the June batch be completed, as the committee can
make a recommendation for =93continuing the work.=94 The Development
Agenda =93is about getting WIPO to continue doing what it does and to
do some things,=94 Clarke said.

An official from a large developing country said the approved
proposals would be =93fleshed out=94 later, presumably under direction of
the General Assembly. The final version of the proposals dropped the
practice of stating which are =93actionable.=94

The Ebb and Flow of Proposal Language

Proposals clusters were labelled A through F. While most cluster
documents apparently went through two or three versions, the African
Group=92s cluster had nine. The Algerian coordinator for the group said
afterward that the group had nearly 80 percent of all of the
technical assistance proposals in the total 111 proposals, and also
was the first cluster to start work. He noted the accomplishment of
removing all of the many bracketed, or unresolved, sections of text.

One of the ways of getting agreement appeared to be the addition in
several places of the term =93inter alia=94 (informally =93among others=94)
which had the effect of making the clause more broadly applicable. So
when one side wanted to add that technical assistance would promote a
=93development-oriented=94 IP culture, another side could agree with the
addition of =93inter alia.=94 In another case of broadening the
applicability of a proposal, a cluster C proposal calling for
developed countries to adapt policies for promoting technology
transfer became a proposal for policies that =93member states,
especially developed countries=94 could adopt.

Some items during the week were consolidated or removed either
because they were seen as belonging to the next meeting=92s batch, or
because they were seen as outside the mandate of the committee. In
some cases, more specificity was added, according to another regional
coordinator.

Kyrgyzstan coordinated on the key cluster on norm-setting
(rulemaking), flexibilities (exception to rules), public policy and
public domain. An official from Kyrgyzstan said they volunteered to
chair because Russia =96 also in their regional group =96 declined, and
because the country is =93neutral=94 since it has both developed and
developing country interests. Developing country concern about its
coordination disappeared by week=92s end.

While Clarke was widely praised for his effectiveness, one official
said afterward that this approach would not work with most WIPO
meeting chairs. Clarke =93made everyone focus on the bottom line,=94 he
said. It is unclear whether Clarke will chair the June meeting.

William New may be reached at wnew@ip-watch.ch.

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