[Ip-health] IP-Watch: WIPO Development Agenda Talks End With No Agreement For Now

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

    30/6/2006


      WIPO Development Agenda Talks End With No Agreement For Now



By William New with Tove Iren S. Gerhardsen

After two week-long meetings and intensive consultations during the
year, talks on bolstering the development perspective of the World
Intellectual Property Organization ended today with no agreement,
sending proposals back to the UN body=92s annual meeting of member states
in September. But a continuation of the debate in some form is likely
next year, sources said.

The WIPO Provisional Committee on Proposals Related to a WIPO
Development Agenda (PCDA) was established by the 2005 General Assembly
with the mission of reviewing proposals and making recommendations. But
negotiators could not agree on recommendations after meeting from 20-24
February <http://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/details.jsp?meeting_id=3D9643>
and 26-30 June
<http://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/details.jsp?meeting_id=3D9766>.

Key development agenda proponents acted to prevent the talks from losing
the ambitious scope originally intended in the proposal, they said.

=93There was no agreement, but also no loss of substance of the
development agenda,=94 a Brazil official said, adding that there is an
agreement that process should proceed. Brazil is a leading proponent of
the development agenda.

=93The development agenda idea is definitely not dead,=94 an official from =
a
European Union member said. =93Both sides are committed to including
development in WIPO.=94

But how the talks will proceed is a critical question to be answered, as
larger economies have sought to keep it contained to a single group and
specific issues such as technical assistance, rather than a full reform
of the organisation.

Proponents attempted during the week to steer the discussion toward
their draft meeting outcome document put forward at the start of the
meeting. But PCDA Chairman Rigoberto Gauto Vielman, the Paraguayan
Ambassador to the WTO, said in an interview that informal consultations
he held showed some countries, the Group B developed countries in
particular, could not accept the proponents=92 proposal as a basis for
discussion.

Some delegations complained that this decision was reached in informal
sessions, which are open only to delegations, not non-governmental
observers who sit in on the plenary sessions. All WIPO sessions are
closed to media.

But key developed countries and WIPO secretariat officials characterized
the outcome as a lost opportunity brought about by a small group of
countries against the larger wishes of the meeting. They said there was
support among a majority of WIPO members to accept the chair=92s proposal
for discussion. Lois Boland of the US Patent and Trademark Office, the
lead of the US delegation, issued a press release expressing
=93disappointment=94 with the impasse and committing to continuing the
effort to improve WIPO=92s development work.

Gauto Vielman said after the meeting that there was no agreement on
which proposals to send to the General Assembly. Instead, reports of the
two meetings drafted by the WIPO secretariat, and all of the proposals,
will be sent to the assembly. Members will be able to comment on the
report in July and a special meeting will be held to approve it
immediately prior to the 25 September assembly.

Chair=92s Proposal Garners Support, But Ignites Impasse

On 29 June, Gauto Vielman put forward a draft of proposals on which he
saw emerging consensus reflecting the discussion of the first three days
of the meeting. But Brazil and Argentina, apparently supported by the
other Friends of Development, flatly rejected the chair=92s proposal as
not sufficiently reflective of their proposals. As there was no
agreement to use the chair=92s proposal as the basis for negotiations, it
died with the committee, Gauto Vielman said.

But the chair=92s proposal rose from the ashes at the last minute as the
Kyrgyz Republic stepped up and presented the chair=92s proposal under its
own name. =93This is the legitimate right of a member of WIPO,=94 a Kyrgyz
official told /Intellectual Property Watch/, adding that =93it was
necessary to do so.=94

Supporters of continuing discussions on the basis of the chair=92s
proposal included Group B, Central and Eastern European countries, Arab
states, some African countries and others, according to participants.

On the question of what this outcome meant for the future of the
proposed development agenda, the Brazilian official said that the
proponent countries =93do not accept downsizing of the agenda without a
real negotiation.=94

The official said the chair=92s proposal did not reflect convergence but
was rather a =93process of vetoing,=94 and =93a negative filter=94 removing
unwanted elements. He said if the chair=92s proposal had gone through, it
would have been a fast-track process with no negotiation but only a
=93yes-or-no vote.=94

Brazil and Argentina first proposed reform of WIPO in late 2004 with the
intent to make it more development-oriented in all its work, and were
joined by 13 other Friends of Development. Since then, their proposals
have expanded and other nations have added their own. In the February
meeting, 111 proposals were lumped together in thematic groupings or
clusters.

This week, negotiators went through cluster-by-cluster, signalling those
they could support. The chair=92s proposal had a high percentage of
proposals from Group B countries, according to an analysis by some NGOs
attending the meeting.

The official from the Kyrgyz Republic, which held the meeting
vice-chair, said his government had =93great concern=94 after the chair=92s
proposal met with resistance. =93An overwhelming majority of member states
supported the proposal,=94 he said.

But the Brazilian official said that it was actually better that the
proposal was forwarded by a country and not by the chair as it would now
be on the same level as the other proposals, such as the one from the
Friends of Development group.

The Friends of Development include Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba,
Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Iran, Kenya, Peru, Sierra Leone,
South Africa, Tanzania, Uruguay and Venezuela.