The World Intellectual Property Organization and the Development Agenda

Abstract

Until recently it was seldom remarked that for over thirty years World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has been a specialized agency of United Nations. As a specialized agency, WIPO is meant to reflect and respond to priorities set in UN General Assembly--priorities often related to promotion of economic in poorer country members of UN, and that are part of mandate of a number of other specialized agencies. However, WIPO takes a specific (and idiosyncratic) view of development; its documents and activities suggest that is best served by a strong intellectual regime. This is to say that WIPO sees promoting use of intellectual rights (IPRs) throughout global system as best way to support economic development. In last two decades, WIPO has spent some time fighting back from its partial marginalization during Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations, which resulted in establishment of Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement. (1) A key element of this project, to reinsert organization into politics of international policy around intellectual property, is its Patent Agenda, established at turn of millennium. The Patent Agenda has encompassed a number of sets of treaty negotiations at WIPO aimed at strengthening international enforcement of patents while also widening their scope. Although pro-IPRs position that underpins Patent Agenda is strongly held by negotiators and representatives of WIPO's richest and most developed members, it is not universally supported among organization's wider membership. Hence, in 2004, a group of WIPO's members set out a new Development Agenda as a direct response to Patent Agenda. The Development Agenda originated in a proposal that Argentina and Brazil informally circulated to members of WIPO at beginning of September 2004, for then imminent WIPO General Assembly. (2) Although there had been some discussion of developmental dimension of intellectual at previous assemblies, this was first time since WIPO's establishment in 1970 that a linked agenda, rather than merely a fragmented set of measures raised during assembly meetings, had been proposed. Almost immediately upon presentation, proposed Development Agenda gathered another eleven cosponsors (Bolivia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Iran, Kenya, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, and Venezuela) and became focus for developing country negotiations at WIPO, led by Group of Friends of Development, a group made up of two original proposers of agenda alongside cosponsors, and Peru and Uruguay. The central concern of Development Agenda's supporters is to make a central concern for WIPO, which hitherto has presented itself to world as merely a technical agency with no political role in global system. In this article, I briefly set out shape of Development Agenda and explore its political significance. The Development Agenda The Development Agenda focuses on an assertion that has been central to WIPO's practices: that WIPO exists to intellectual property through technical/legal support of its members. The agenda calls into question compatibility of this goal with expected objectives of an agency associated with United Nations. The UN's other (development-oriented) specialized agencies place technology transfer and poverty alleviation above globalized protection of IPRs in order of importance. Indeed, in original treaty making WIPO a specialized agency of UN, it was obliged to work with United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) to promote and facilitate the transfer of technology to developing countries in such a manner as to assist these countries in attainting their objectives in fields of science and technology and trade and development (Article 10, emphasis added). …

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