WIPO DEVELOPMENT AGENDA COMMITTEE GETS TO GRIPS WITH TRICKY ISSUES

A World Intellectual Property Organization committee charged with examining over 100 proposals to entrench development concerns throughout the global body's functions kicked off a week-long meeting on 11 June. The fourth session of the Provisional Committee on Proposals Related to a WIPO Development Agenda (PCDA) has the task of agreeing recommendations that can be forwarded to the WIPO General Assembly in September.

The negotiations spring from demands first made in autumn 2004 by a group of countries dubbed the 'Friends of Development' (see BRIDGES Weekly, 6 October 2004 http://www.ictsd.org/weekly/04-10-06/story1.htm).

The February session of the PCDA successfully culled a group of 40 proposals that had been deemed easier to resolve into a subset of 24 recommendations to the September General Assembly. This fourth session will look at the 71 substantively trickier proposals, which have been compiled in 'Annex B' of the document containing all of the submissions. The Annex B proposals have been classified into five thematic clusters: technical assistance; norm setting, flexibilities, public policy and public domain; technology transfer, information technology and access to knowledge; evaluation; and institutional matters including mandate and governance.

PCDA Chair Ambassador Trevor Clarke (Barbados) proceeded by assigning a cluster to each regional group coordinator. They produced draft texts to be taken to intensive small-group consultations to bridge differences on the proposals and arrive at concrete recommendations, which were then to be reported back to plenary. A similar 'green room' approach was credited with facilitating the breakthrough on the earlier set of proposals in February (see BRIDGES Weekly, 28 February 2007, http://www.ictsd.org/weekly/07-02-28/story1.htm). However, midway through the week, discussions had not advanced past the second of the five clusters, with agreement proving difficult.

Pakistani delegate Ali Asad Gillani said that the slower progress was predictable, since the technical assistance and norm-setting issues the first two clusters dealt with were substantively tougher than the rest. Though concerned with the pace of progress, he said that the "flexibility and compromise" shown by developing and developed members alike boded well for the conclusion of the PCDA process.

Prior to this session, the Friends of Development group consolidated the 71 Annex B proposals into 25, distributing them in a 'non-paper' to WIPO members. The Group B of developed countries hosted a preparatory meeting in Singapore last week.

ICTSD reporting.