The meeting at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on how the agency can reform itself to achieve humanitarian aims has concluded in triumph for the side of the good. We went to WIPO some years ago to the coldest possible reception from the most-captured agency in the history of the UN. Now we stand on the verge of completely remaking WIPO, thanks to dozens of progressive organizations who made the trip to Geneva and called them to account.
We won big this week. First, there is a genuinely substantive policy discussion going on within WIPO about its obligations to be more than an IP-factory and instead explore its capacity as a positive force for the social and economic development of its member states. Not only was the majority of the meeting spent discussing the excellent Friends of Development proposal, but the good guys secured two more meetings to focus on reforming WIPO, defeating those who wanted to limit the process to a single additional meeting. Second, WIPO agreed to open the next two events to the 17 non-accredited non-government organizations (NGOs) that fought hard to attend this first meeting.
The Chair's summary of the proceedings and the next steps in the process have been reproduced for your convenience after the jump. WIPO has now ended its first Inter-Sessional Intergovernmental Meeting (IIM) on the Development Agenda. The next meeting will be June 20-22, where delegates will consider comments on the proposals from the 14 Friends of Development, the US, the UK, Mexico, and any other proposals put forward. The third meeting will be sometime in July. That meeting will finalize the report to the WIPO General Assembly.
(Thanks, Donna!)
