KEI Statement to the WIPO Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP)
March 3, 2008
Thank you Ambassador. As this is the first time Knowledge Ecology International is taking the floor, please let me congratulate you upon your election to the chair. Today everyone agrees that the WIPO mission is not simply about expanding intellectual property rights. Topics such as access to knowledge, the implications and benefits of a rich and accessible public domain, and strategies for dealing with abuses of rights, or other measures to protect the public interest, are part of the agenda. So too will be thoughtful evaluation of new methods of supporting creativity and invention, including those that rely upon openness, sequential innovation, and collaboration.
With respect to recommendation 19 on access to knowledge, we welcome the Friends of Development suggestion to “organize an open forum for discussion” inviting relevant international organizations and non-governmental organizations. Innovation and development are predicated upon access to knowledge. The original Friends of Development proposal in 2004 called for an “elaboration of a treaty access to knowledge and technology”. We believe an open forum would be a welcome first step. Additional measures should include discussions within the SCCR, SCP and CDIP, of the possible areas where global norms on access to knowledge would be appropriate and consistent with the mission of WIPO. Next week the SCCR will be looking at the topic of limitations and exceptions in the field of copyright, and the conversation about a potential treaty on access to knowledge and technology should benefit from this important discussion. For example, it may be interesting for WIPO to consider global norms to facilitate access to orphaned copyrighted works, or to facilitate the development of cross-border services for the visually impaired, or for distance education, three areas where the SCCR could do substantive work.
We welcome the adoption of recommendation 36 which calls upon WIPO to “exchange experiences on open collaborative projects such as the Human Genome Project as well as on IP models” particularly in view of the letter (7 July 2003) from academics, civil society and the private sector to WIPO requesting the organization to convene a meeting on open and collaborative projects.
We hope that WIPO creates a forum on the control of anticompetitive practices in both the patent and copyright fields, and considered also problems of implementing Article 40 of the TRIPS agreement.
Much of the development agenda discussions concern the issue of impact assessments. KEI recommends that the WIPO Secretariat survey member states on the systems they now use to undertake impact assessments and economic analysis in the area of intellectual property legal norms and practices. Our suggestion is that WIPO create an economics bureau that can respond to research requests from member states. The member states should frame the research questions, and the responses from the economic bureau should be objective, and subject to peer review.
Thank you for your consideration.