The following statement was delivered by Shyamkrishna Balganesh on behalf of the UPD, at the WIPO IIM-3

Thank you, Mr. Chairman for the opportunity to take the floor at this meeting.

The Union for the Public Domain (UPD) is an international civil society organization that works for the promotion and enhancement of the public domain. We continue to believe that the matters being discussed at this meeting will be of lasting significance for the future of technology and economic development in the developing world.

The UPD strongly supports the proposal of the Group of Friends of Development to amend the WIPO Convention so as to include an express reference to the development dimension. We would like to echo the observations of some member states at previous meetings that the patent, copyright and trademarks systems should cease to be viewed as ends in themselves and come to be understood as means to an end —- an end that needs to be justified by reference to WIPO’s broader U.N. mandate of ‘economic, social and cultural development’ enumerated in Article 1 of the 1974 Agreement.

The UPD strongly disapproves of attempts made to over-simplify the content of the present discussions by portraying them as a choice between blanket support, and blanket opposition, for the diverse laws that include copyright, patent, trademark, and others. Mischaracterizations such as these obscure the true purpose of these discussions and are inimical to constructive dialogue -– critical to taking the present discussions forward.

The UPD supports the creation of an independent WIPO Research & Evaluation Office (WERO) to conduct development impact assessments of WIPO’s activities and report directly to the General Assembly. We do not believe that the Permanent Committee on Cooperation for Development Related to Intellectual Property (PCIPD) will have either the capacity or independence to oversee a task such as this.

The UPD strongly supports the idea of an Access to Knowledge Treaty. A treaty such as this should attempt to balance the interests of rights holders and the public at large and at the same time pay adequate consideration to the needs of developing countries. In addition, it should seek to safeguard and promote the role of the public domain in fostering innovation and creativity.

The UPD believes that WIPO needs to be more open to civil society participation in its policy-making activities. In specific, the involvement of public interest groups from developing countries needs to be enhanced. The WIPO should make an effort to actively solicit the views of different public interest groups working in the developing world, in its various policy-making bodies. This will of course, need to be accompanied by a comprehensive attempt by WIPO to enhance public accountability and participation.

Lastly, the UPD agrees that development must not be a 'pretext for diluting international intellectual property'. We agree that it should not be a pretext, but instead the very basis from which the patent, copyright and trademark systems must seek their ultimate justification. When these systems however come to impede socio-economic development -- when they come to restrict access to essential educational tools, when they deny individuals life-saving drugs in the poorest parts of the world; `intellectual property' is in danger of itself becoming the pretext under which we are distracted from the complicated task of promoting development.

By shyam at 21/07/2005 - 19:20 | WIPO