[Ecommerce] Story on Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia Proposal

[Manon Ress]

  http://brazzil.com/mag/content/view/279/2/

Brazil Wants New Rules for Intellectual Property
Written by Juliana C=E9zar Nunes
Wednesday, 29 September 2004

Today Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia will present a proposal for an
amendment to the statutes of the World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO), which is housed in the UN.

The amendment calls for a country's stage of development to be taken
into consideration so as not to permit property protection to impede
access to culture and technology.

"The amendment has received support from developing nations," reports
Roberto Jaguaribe, the president of the Brazilian Institute of
Intellectual Property (INPI), who is attending the session of the WIPO.

Although developed nations have not come out openly against the
proposal, Jaguaribe says its sponsors are ready to defend the idea in
discussions which will take place today.

In April, the Interministerial Committee to Combat Piracy and the World
Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) held a meeting in Bras=EDlia
with organizations from the Mercosur member-countries (Argentina,
Paraguay, Uruguay, and Brazil, together with associate members, Chile
and Bolivia) to discuss copyrights and the war on piracy in Latin America.

The purpose of the meeting was to seek a common agreement for the
region, based on a debate over proposals, as well as to promote training
and technical cooperation.

"The main goal of this meeting is to work out an exchange of experiences
with respect to the observance of intellectual property rights, more
specifically in relation to combatting piracy in the Mercosur countries,
Bolivia, and Chile," said Isabella Pimentel, consultant at the WIPO
office of Economic Development for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Subsequent to the meeting, the organizations were to submit the
conclusions about combatting piracy to the appropriate organs in each
country, to contribute to the formulation of both unilateral and
multilateral policies.

Need of Update

Experts from various countries agreed, in a conference promoted by the
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in March 2002, in
Geneva, that the global patent system should be modernized and simplified.

The president of National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI), Jos=E9
Gra=E7a Aranha, revealed at the time that, although it was not explicited,
the modernization and simplification depends on the implantation of a
global patent system.

He added that, if this system is created, it should take in
consideration not only the interests of the industrialized countries but
also those of developing countries. According to Gra=E7a Aranha, Brazil
will participate actively of the debates about the issue.

Ag=EAncia Brasil
Translator: Allen Bennett

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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