[Ecommerce] WIPO in DC: new business model of open source "might come up"

[Manon Ress]

"I think WIPO intends in the future to have broad conferences dealing
with new technologies and new issues in copyright,
and I would imagine that that new business model of open source might
come up," [Stoll]she said.

Quotes in Technology Daily PM Edition January 14, 2003

Intellectual Property
WIPO's Washington Liaison Is A 'Bridge' To Geneva
by William New

Suzanne Stoll has the world's intellectual property at her fingertips.

As the Washington coordinator for the Geneva-based World Intellectual
Property Organization,
her mandate is to help raise awareness of WIPO in the United States and
to promote intellectual
property generally as a tool for wealth creation and development.

She spends her days as a liaison, meeting with congressmen and staff,
government officials from U.S. agencies
such as the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), Copyright Office and
State Department, and representatives from
various non-governmental organizations and trade associations.

WIPO is a consensus-based, 180-member U.N. organization that negotiates
treaties on subjects such as copyrights,
patents and trademarks, and it also handles many Internet issues,
including domain-name disputes. If Stoll does
not know the answer to a specific question about the wide-ranging WIPO
agenda, she knows where to get it.

Stoll was named to the office in 2002 after WIPO members voted to open
offices in Washington and Brussels, Belgium,
the home of the European Union. She reports directly to WIPO
Director-General Kamil Idris as well as to Rita Hayes,
the deputy director-general whose new portfolio includes copyright and
enforcement issues. Hayes is a former U.S.
ambassador to the World Trade Organization. To hear the concerns and
interests of the U.S. intellectual property
community on  copyright and enforcement, Stoll is helping to plan a U.S.
"listening tour" for Hayes, probably in March.

Stoll has a law degree and came to WIPO after more than 20 years as a
congressional aide to three southern Florida
Democrats, including former Reps. Dan Mica and Harry Johnston and
current Rep. Robert Wexler. Wexler is active on
the House International Relations Committee and Judiciary Courts, the
Internet and Intellectual Property Subcommittee.

Stoll's husband is PTO Enforcement Director Robert Stoll, but she said
she deals with other offices at PTO, such
as international affairs.

As WIPO runs into many hotly debated global issues, Stoll has learned to
step carefully on those subjects.
One such issue is the spread of "open source" software, which allows
users to view and modify the underlying code.
Despite the role of open-source software in the international realm,
questions have been raised as to whether it is
a topic that WIPO should address under its mandate to further
intellectual property rights. Stoll said it could
emerge in the context of conferences on other, more central WIPO topics.

"I think WIPO intends in the future to have broad conferences dealing
with new technologies and new issues in copyright,
and I would imagine that that new business model of open source might
come up," she said.

WIPO also has no specific initiatives on the hot issue of how to manage
digital rights but rather sees itself as a forum
for discussion on the subject, Stoll said. "What we hope to do is be a
forum for discussion between hardware, software and
content people on subjects that are so sensitive to them -- like levies
and technological protections against infringement,
subjects currently under debate throughout the world," she said.






--
Manon Anne Ress
Consumer Project on Technology
www.cptech.org
PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
manon.ress@cptech.org, voice: 1.202.387.8030, fax: 1.202.234.5176