[Ip-health] IP-Watch: WIPO Appoints New Top Officials, Readies Policies On Conflicts Of Interest, Staff Cuts

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/06/15/wipo-appoints-new-officials-readi=
es-policies-on-conflicts-of-interest-staff-cuts/

15 June 2009
WIPO Appoints New Top Officials, Readies Policies On Conflicts Of
Interest, Staff Cuts
By William New @ 3:01 pm

The member governments of the World Intellectual Property
Organization=92s executive body on Monday approved a set of seven most
senior officials at the organisation to join the director general late
this year. Monday=92s Coordination Committee meeting also will address
new policies on financial disclosure and conflicts of interest among
top WIPO officials, and voluntary staff departures in the face of
smaller budgets.

The new deputy directors general are: Geoffrey Onyeama (Nigeria),
Cooperation for Development (including Development Agenda and WIPO
Academy); James Pooley (United States), Patents; Wang Binying (China),
Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Geographical Indications; and
Johannes Wichard (Germany) Global Issues (including enforcement,
arbitration/mediation, communications, and the committee on genetic
resources, traditional knowledge and folklore).

The new assistant directors general are: Ambassador Trevor Clarke
(Barbados), copyright and related rights; Ambi Sundaram (Sri Lanka),
administration and management; and Yoshiyuki Takagi (Japan) global IP
infrastructure.

The officials were proposed for committee approval by Director General
Francis Gurry (who took office on 1 October 2008) after months of
private consultations with member governments. They all will take
office on 1 December 2009 for five years until 30 November 2014. This
includes Pooley, who was offered by the secretariat to start earlier
to fill the patent role left open by Gurry=92s election last year, as he
could make the move to Geneva sooner, according to sources.

The morning session saw a succession of member statements raising some
concerns but in every case supporting the director general=92s
nominations.

=94It was a positive process,=94 a WIPO official said afterward. =93It was
not necessarily expected to be a positive process.=94

Among the concerns raised either in the plenary or in consultations
leading up to the meeting, according to sources, was that some
countries like the United States appear to have an appointee every
time there is a rotation of top officials, while most others do not
have direct representation at all.

Pakistan, supported by others, praised the =93inclusive and transparent
consultative mechanism,=94 but restated a point the delegate said had
been made to Gurry in informal consultations that the rotation of
governments and regions should apply to all posts of deputy and
assistant directors general.

Pakistan also suggested that the WIPO Development Agenda activities
fall directly under the director general=92s responsibility, and that
the =93right person=94 should be in charge of each issue the organisation
deals with. This would help ensure movement on policy issues that have
been deadlocked for years such as the Intergovernmental Committee on
Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC). Under the
new WIPO structure, IGC issues, which are of great importance to
developing countries trying to better protect their resources, fall
under the German official, Wichard.

In addition, it was raised during the process that none of the new
appointments are representatives from Spanish or French-speaking
countries despite their large presence in the WIPO membership.

And some raised concern over term limits of five years instead of the
customary six. The shorter terms were proposed by the secretariat to
keep the cabinet appointments in line with the six-year term of the
director general. Gurry took office one year before the end of the
current outgoing DDGs and ADGs after previous Director General Kamil
Idris left a year early under pressure.

The final regional representation includes three from the same
regional group, the Group B developed countries. The broader Asia-
Pacific region overall also holds a high number of strategic
positions, with the Director General (Australia), Chef de Cabinet
(India), and three of the seven new appointees.

The breakout is as follows: Barbados (Group of Latin American and
Caribbean countries), China (its own regional group), Germany (Group B
developed countries), Japan (Group B), Nigeria (African Group), Sri
Lanka (Asian Group), and the United States (Group B).

The biographies of the seven officials are available on the 15-16 June
Coordination Committee meeting webpage.

Onyeama is currently WIPO assistant director general for external
relations, industry, communications and public outreach. Pooley is a
partner at law firm of Morrison & Foerster, and founder and chair of
Silicon Valley Lawyers for Obama during the 2008 election. Wang is
WIPO assistant director general for administrative support services
and General Assembly affairs. Wichard is deputy director general for
commercial and economic law at the German Federal Ministry of Justice,
and worked in the arbitration and trademark sections at WIPO from
1998-2006.

Of the ADGs, Clarke is Ambassador of Barbados to the UN and other
international organisations in Geneva, plus chaiir of the WIPO
Committee on Development and IP, and chair of the World Trade
Organization special session on a geographical indications register.
He previously had a 41-year career as an engineer and executive at
Cable & Wireless. Sundaram is director of the World Health
Organization Department of Operational Support and Services, and was
raised in Geneva. Takagi is WIPO executive director responsible for
global IP infrastructure, the WIPO Academy and information technology.

100 Staff Cuts by 2010?

The Coordination Committee on Monday also began addressing a
potentially difficult secretariat proposal that could help the fee-
based organisation=92s bottom line during the global economic crisis,
and clear the way for new positions to be created or filled by
trimming some of the existing staff. In order to gain acceptance for
his cabinet recommendations, Gurry may have suggested to member states
that other opportunities in the organisation could arise. But he would
need to create some room for incoming people as the budget is tight.

This also could serve to encourage the departure of staff seen as
working against the current leadership or the general well-being of
WIPO during the bitterly divided recent past years, some sources
suggested. Conversely, if the departure package is sufficiently
attractive, it might also lead to the loss of some talented officials
WIPO might have wished to keep, others said.

WIPO staff in recent years generally have not appeared to be eager to
leave. An average of nine staff persons per year have left WIPO in the
past 5 years, according to the secretariat. Under the proposed pre-
retirement and voluntary separation programmes, approximately 100
personnel are expected to leave by end of June 2010, it said.

The separation programme stems from pressure to reduce staff in light
of the economic downturn, and recommendations provided in 2007 by
consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

=93The organisation is under increasing pressure to reduce the overall
number of employees at a more rapid rate than can be achieved through
projected retirements and natural attrition,=94 the WIPO secretariat
said in a 29 May report prepared for the Coordination Committee meeting.

PwC=92s desk-to-desk report of employment at WIPO found (IPW, WIPO, 10
July 2007) that WIPO has a shortage of key skills, including
=93languages, management competences, information technology and
specialist areas of intellectual property,=94 WIPO said.

The organisation must fill the gaps by hiring skilled staff and
replacing staff whose skills no longer match the organisation=92s needs
and who could not be reskilled or redeployed. This was confirmed by
the =93strategic realignment process=94 of the past 6-8 months under
Director General Francis Gurry, who took office in October 2008.

With the expected dropoff in filing fees at WIPO in the next few years
due the economy, WIPO is looking to shed unnecessary jobs faster,
despite being approved by its membership to create 22 new posts in
2009. As confirmed by PwC, the rate of attrition through retirements
from the organisation is low. So the =93most acceptable and humane=94 way
to get more staff to leave sooner than they have to is to give more
attractive termination conditions than they would otherwise get.

Interested employees must apply by end of September 2009, with
decisions made by end of December 2009.

Financial Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

The Coordination Committee also is to approve an incremental plan to
require senior WIPO officials to disclose any interests, financial or
otherwise, in issues of consideration at WIPO. The secretariat
proposal would apply to the =93director 1=94 level and above, of which
there are currently 54 people, as well as personnel in the financial
sections of the organisation. It is unclear how the plan applies to
consultants at WIPO.

The proposal includes the disclosure policies of several other
international organisations, such as the International Criminal Court,
World Health Organization, and International Monetary Fund.

The WIPO declaration also would require staff to disclose any gifts,
honours, political or other activities outside the organisation, and
forbids staff in the International Bureau from seeking or accepting
instructions from any government or other authority outside the bureau.

The secretariat also plans to propose the Coordination Committee
approve the new United Nations code of ethics for personnel, once it
is approved by the UN General Assembly in September. The code would
provide additional =93overarching guidelines=94 for the organisation, the
secretariat said.

The Coordination Committee also will be asked to designate a chair of
the WIPO Appeal Board. The chair since late 2007 has been Francisco
Verros, the permanent representative of Greece to the United Nations,
who has announced he will relinquish the responsibility. The proposed
new chair is Dominick Devlin, a United Kingdom national who has been
legal adviser to the International Labour Office in Geneva, as well as
a legal officer at other UN agencies like the World Health
Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization.

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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
thiru@keionline.org


Tel: +41 22 791 6727
Mobile: +41 76 508 0997