WIPO Development Agenda

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WIPO members.

The WIPO Development Agenda is a program of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in the form of 45 recommendations. The General Assembly of WIPO approved it on September 27, 2007. After the Doha Round of the WTO in 2001, this is the second international agreement in decades to be critical of the steady expansion of intellectual property rights.

background

WIPO was originally established to strengthen intellectual property rights in the world. However, since 1974 it has been a sub-organization of the United Nations and thus also its development mandate. At the same time, there is a right to vote in it, which grants each country one vote, which means that there is a clear majority of votes from developing countries. Nevertheless, for various reasons, for decades only the advocates of stronger property rights exercised control within the organization.

Emergence

The program goes back to a proposal made in 2004 by Argentina and Brazil . Argentina pointed out above all the rising welfare costs, which brought with it a further tightening of intellectual property rights, as well as the situation of international trade, in which stronger protective rights particularly favored the developed countries. The proposal, adopted by the General Assembly, launched a series of government-level conferences. In 2006, WIPO established the Provisional Committee on Proposals Related to the Development Agenda (PCRA ). A provisional committee collected over 100 proposals for items to be included in the program.

Proponents of the program see it as a first step towards halting "upward harmonization" - the trend that has shaped the entire 20th century to base international agreements on intellectual property rights on ever higher standards. According to researchers such as Peter Drahos and Christopher May , the agreement constitutes a paradigm shift towards a conception of intellectual property rights that also takes public policy into account.

In 2005, WIPO set up a committee to structure the discussions. In 2007 the committee submitted a proposal with 111 specific recommendations to the General Assembly of WIPO, which were reduced to 45 in the course of further negotiations. In the course of the negotiations, all explicit references to the Doha Round, human rights or access to medicine fell from the text of the Development Agenda. The Doha Round and human rights were important reference points before and during the early negotiations.

content

The program makes 45 proposals, which are divided into six thematic areas. While there is consensus among members and researchers that the agenda is against tightening intellectual property rights, what it stands for is far more controversial. According to WIPO, 19 of these recommendations can be implemented immediately, as no additional resources are required for their implementation.

  • Topic A: Technical Assistance and Capacities: The proposals here aim to make processes within WIPO transparent. Assistance from the organization should only come at the request of the countries concerned, be carried out by independent experts and take into account the specific local circumstances.
  • Topic B: Flexibility of international agreements: Demands in particular that agreements should be negotiated transparently and with further participation - including by independent experts and NGOs. There should only be new agreements if the member states so wish. The agreements themselves should be in line with the United Nations development goal.
  • Topic complex C: Technology transfer and access to knowledge: Demand a better flow of information of knowledge from the developed to the developing countries, demand to detach the concept of development from its purely economic perspective and to use the broad concept of development of the UN.
  • Topic D: Review of WIPO's work: calls for annual review of WIPO with regard to its development activities.
  • Topic E: WIPO as an institution: above all, calls for transparent procedures, processes in which all those concerned are involved, and closer cooperation with other UN sub-organizations.
  • Topic F: Other. Consists of a recommendation to pursue the policy of protecting intellectual property "in the context of broader social interests".

Peter Yu describes the goals of the program in two areas: On the one hand, WIPO itself is to be reformed, in particular the influence of developing countries is to be greater, and the organization is to base its actions on a broader concept of development than before. Development should be taken into account in all activities and programs of WIPO.

On the other hand, the balance in international patent and copyright law is to change by placing a stronger focus on knowledge transfer. The protection of traditional knowledge and traditional cultural forms of expression on an international level should be granted.

implementation

Since the formulation of the points and the adoption by the General Assembly are new procedures, the meaning of the program in international law is still unclear. It is also still unclear how much the program legally binds individual actors. It is also unclear whether the General Assembly and not the Conference can adopt such a program.

Recommendations and decisions of the WIPO have no binding effect on the member states. In this area it acts as "soft law." Since these are only recommendations, the agenda does not necessarily have any binding effect on WIPO itself.

Together with the recommendations, the General Assembly established a Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP), which is supposed to enforce the further implementation of the recommendations. This should go through all the recommendations one after the other, obtain contributions to the discussion from the individual governments, and obtain an estimate of the workload by the General Secretariat of WIPO before starting the implementation. This is likely to be a lengthy process. He met for the first time in March 2008, and a second time in July of that year. WIPO General Secretary Francis Gurry has undertaken to closely monitor the implementation of the program.

The changing climate within WIPO and also the WTO ensures that the developed countries, as advocates of strong rights, seek forums outside these institutions, be it bilateral negotiations or multilateral agreements outside the established organizations such as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement . The studies that the program envisages and which deal with the importance of public domains and the importance of traditional knowledge for copyright and patent law, for example , have already been carried out in part. Recommendations to include comprehensive restrictions for the blind in international copyright law will be discussed by WIPO in 2011 and will probably be included in international treaties in the foreseeable future.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Jeremy De Beer: Defining WIPO's Development Agenda in ders. (Ed.) P. 1
  2. ↑ a b Jeremy De Beer: Defining WIPO's Development Agenda in ders. (Ed.) P. 4
  3. ↑ a b De Beer p. IX
  4. ↑ Yijun Tian: Re-thinking intellectual property: the political economy of copyright protection in the digital era Taylor & Francis US, 2008 ISBN 0415465346 p. 46
  5. ↑ a b c Jeremy De Beer: Defining WIPO's Development Agenda in ders. (Ed.) P. 2
  6. ↑ Laurence R. Helfer, Graeme W. Austin: Human Rights and Intellectual Property: Mapping the Global Interface Cambridge University Press, 2011 ISBN 0521711258 p. 126
  7. ↑ Jeremy De Beer: Defining WIPO's Development Agenda in ders. (Ed.) P. 5
  8. ^ A b Laurence R. Helfer, Graeme W. Austin: Human Rights and Intellectual Property: Mapping the Global Interface Cambridge University Press, 2011 ISBN 0521711258 p. 48
  9. ^ A b Elizabeth Kiew-Kuan Ng Global health and development in: Thomas Pogge, Matthew Rimmer, Kim Rubenstein: Incentives for Global Public Health: Patent Law and Access to Essential Medicines Cambridge University Press, 2010 ISBN 0521116562 p. 109
  10. ↑ a b Jeremy De Beer: Defining WIPO's Development Agenda in ders. (Ed.) P. 11
  11. ↑ Jeremy De Beer: Defining WIPO's Development Agenda in ders. (Ed.) P. 12
  12. ↑ Jeremy De Beer: Defining WIPO's Development Agenda in ders. (Ed.) P. 8
  13. ↑ Jeremy De Beer: Defining WIPO's Development Agenda in ders. (Ed.) P. 16
  14. ^ Carlos María Correa: Research handbook on the protection of intellectual property under WTO rules Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010 ISBN 1847209041 p. 185

literature

  • Jeremy De Beer (ed.): Implementing the World Intellectual Property Organization's development agenda Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 2009 ISBN 1554581540
  • Neil Netanel (ed.): The Development Agenda: Global Intellectual Property and Developing Countries Oxford 2009

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