Semi live blogging, for Friday, at the WIPO 2009 General Assembly
[more from twitter: http://twitter.com/jamie_love]
This morning I had a chance to talk with Carsten Fink, the new Chief Economist at WIPO. Carsten was widely considered to be a good choice for WIPO. His job will be to develop from scratch an economics research capacity at WIPO on topics involving intellectual property, public policy, and development. Right now he is the only economist on board. Carsten will be reporting to Dr. Johannes Christian Wichard, the new Deputy DG for Global Issues, and working with a number of other WIPO offices.
The meeting is thinning out a bit. By next week, a lot of non-Geneva people will be gone. There is some speculation that SCCR discussion will not happen until Monday.
Apparently NGOs not be allowed to speak at #wipo ga this week (thanks to FIAPF) but may submit written statements on every agenda item. I’m not sure whether or not this applies to groups who are not attending the meeting. Nick Aston-Hart will be following up with the WIPO Secretariat on this topic.
This morning there was also an OSI meeting on Anti-counterfeiting initiatives at the WMO.
Last night I learned that Chile currently has a notice concerning a consultation about the WBU treaty proposal here, or here.
I had a talk with the US Chamber of Commerce delegation at WIPO, and they said they saw no need at all for making the ACTA texts public. They are happy with a non-transparency process.
I was just told the US/WIPO training program involving visual disabilities will be rescheduled to early 2010 (rather than Nov30-Dec4).
There has been a little of drama today over opposition by Syria to Israel being an international search authority in the PCT, and now, Spain is really worked up, and seems really angry at WIPO about some staffing issues. Now other countries are jumping in. It concerns complaints about geographic representation. UK says, country of nationality should be secondary to qualifications. Francis Gurry is explaining that turnover at WIPO is only 1.5 percent. Apparently these jobs pay pretty well. At one point Francis Gurry said. “Please punish me for the sins I have committed. The attrition rate is 1.5% to 1.7%; we can’t sack half the staff”.
Now talking about the development agenda. Ambassador Trevor Clarke has just resigned as co-chair of the CDIP. Clarke will joint WIPO as head of copyright in December 1.
Pakistan is making an elegant tribute to Ambassador Clarke’s work on the development agenda.
Costa Rica is talking about using the WIPO development agenda to address the public domain and competition law.
Today the U.S. government confirmed it was supporting Tom Bombelles for WIPO Director of Global Challenges. From 1991 to December 2008, Bombelles was a lobbyist for PhRMA, and then Merck, where he often designed strategies to oppose compulsory licensing of patents on medicines in developing countries. In early 2009 the Obama Administration pushed the WHO to hire Bombelles as a consultant on influenza preparedness, and asked that WIPO offer him a consultancy in the Global Challenges programs. Since then, the USPTO has pushed his candidacy for this key WIPO job, which among other things, deals with access to medicine.
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