WIPO: Common Public Interest NGO statement published
The public interest NGOs present at WIPO have published a common statement supporting the proposals of the Group of Friends of Development (.pdf, 3.3 MB) to establish a Development Agenda for WIPO. Those who want to support the statement can now sign up at www.ipjustice.org.
The common statement demands that: the development dimension should be present in all of WIPO’s work a treaty on Access to Knowledge (A2K for short) should be considered an independent WIPO Evaluation and Research Office (WERO) should be set up to monitor WIPO’s work there should be clear principles and guidelines for the technical assistance programme It also demands that WIPO’s norms and practices should be reviewed. Here, special attention should be given to: the respective costs and benefits of copyright, patents and trademarks the fact that patents, copyright and trademarks are not ends in themselves, but rather tools to foster the common good the issue that there can be no “one size fits all”-solutions the flexibilities built into copyright and patent laws greater transparency of WIPO and its work
There is already a sizeable number of NGOs supporting this, most importantly from developing countries. Feel free to express your support as well.
The meeting will start tomorrow. I’m curious what it will bring.