Intellectual Property and the "WIPO Development Agenda"

The persistent attempts of the major industrial nations to press ahead with the newly initiated (Doha) round of international trade negotiations under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have met with resistance from the developing countries (DCs). The failure of the WTO Ministerial meeting in Cancun and the slow pace of trade negotiations both before and since then are potent proof of that resistance. Moreover, the anti-globalisation demonstrations that have kept popping up everywhere (Seattle and Prague, amongst others) have highlighted the problems of economic and social transformation in DCs. The worsening impacts of mass poverty and the spread of the Aids pandemic on DCs have fuelled their repeated calls for reform of the global trading system. By comparison, the role of intellectual property (IP) in the development of nonindustrial nations has received very little attention from any quarter. The DCs have persisted in their demands to have the new round of WTO trade negotiations revisit the role of TRIPs in their economies and cultures. Brazil and Argentina took the extra step of articulating a “development agenda” for the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and formally submitting their proposal, on 26 August 2004, to the WIPO General Assembly. The US, UK and Mexico have submitted their responses and positions. This paper examines the various proposals within the framework of the historical roles of IP and the social-economic conditions of DCs. It starts off by summarising, in Section 1, the negative experiences of DCs in their failed attempts to reform the IP system both on an international level and locally. Section 2 picks up the recent (post-TRIPs) exploits of the DCs in pushing for some form of revision of TRIPs as part of the new (Doha) round of international trade negotiations. Section 3 examines the proposal for a ‘WIPO Development Agenda’ put forward by Argentina and Brazil. Section 4 looks at the reception of the same proposal by the major industrial powers and assesses its chances of success. The article concludes by highlighting the fallacious propositions that permeate the ‘WIPO Development Agenda’, namely that the international IP system culminating in TRIPs can still facilitate the transformation of DCs and that it possesses sufficient flexibility amenable to the needs of such nations.