A DIFFERENT WIPO STORY
Given the fact that numerous developing countries joined WIPO and sought to work within the existing international sphere to improve development in their home-countries, WIPO saw its mission as instructed by the needs of all its member countries, not simply those with powerful industrial centers. To that end, and consistent with its mission under the UN, WIPO began with education, but not simply education in terms of intellectual property rights protection. Instead, WIPO worked with UNESCO to build a clearing house for textbooks to help develop the educational background for future innovation by providing the necessary materials for development. Partnerships were made with existing educational institutions and with organizations working on providing education to ensure that literacy dropped and education became a priority. Associated with access to knowledge came domestic education in health, engineering, and agriculture, all much needed areas within the developing world. UNESCO took the lead on this project and WIPO supported them with the necessary technical information, but they did so recognizing that the goals of education would take priority over the protection of intellectual property.
Complimenting the textbook strategy to facilitate development, WIPO worked with UNCTAD to create an agricultural clearing house where appropriate agricultural technologies were licensed and shared with the developing world. With a goal of providing appropriate technology, WIPO in association with UNCTAD became an engine for appropriate development instead of a vehicle for making profits for multinational corporations.
WIPO also developed a technology transfer process associated with the new Patent Cooperation Treaty. The tech transfer process provided developing countries with legal support in negotiating licensing agreements with companies in the industrialized north. The problem was complex and to do it correctly, entire patent portfolios needed to be licensed, not simply a single technology. WIPO, in association with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization provided expert assistance on the ground to build facilities and encourage innovation. Technologies were licensed at affordable prices and with the intent of creating the necessary infrastructure for health care, transportation and industrial development. WIPO used its role as a clearing house for patents to identify the types of technologies most suitable for a developing economy and work to provide these technologies to the global south.
Finally, recognizing the importance of public health for a viable economy, WIPO worked with WHO to ensure that access existed to essential medicines and again used their patent clearinghouse to identify the key medicines that could be licensed affordably. They then worked with other UN agencies to establish the necessary infrastructure throughout the global south to produce these medicines locally and helped facilitate a distribution network by supporting public health clinics, which were staffed by those who were receiving and education because it was now possible to afford the textbooks to study.
In all cases, WIPO understood its mission as supporting other UN agencies in their efforts to improve development. Instead of working to develop offices and model laws in developing countries, WIPO first worked to create the conditions for development and then allowed the laws to emerge out of the process itself.
When all is said and done, it isn’t clear this rather idealistic scenario would facilitate development better than the reality. After all, UN agencies have been working on achieving development and have categorically failed if measured by economic conditions in the least developed countries. If anything, the spectacular failure to develop suggests that more is at work here than creating the conditions of protecting knowledge and innovation, but instead perhaps there is something wrong with the approach to development through the neo-liberal model of free trade and structural adjustment. However, such a scenario goes well beyond the scope of intellectual property protection and need to be saved for another day.
I want to conclude this paper by bringing back full circle to Geneva. This paper seeks to examine the impact of WIPO on LDC countries. However, one must question the ability of an organization to encourage the spread the message of the value of intellectual property internationally when violations of copyright law exist just down the street from their own headquarters. If one were to head through Geneva towards the city of Carouge, one would pass a bar called “Central Perk,” where the sign reads, “we’re your F.R.I. E. N.D.S.” Despite the fact this Central Perk is a bar, not a coffee shop, and no one was especially friendly, it is clear that the name and likeness is appropriated from the popular hit-television show Friends.
The presence of Central Perk in Geneva is another irony of WIPO’s existence. If Geneva is the headquarters of WIPO (and the WTO) and yet this bar can exist within a long walk from both headquarters, what really are these organizations doing? Of course, it is possible this local bar has permission from the television show to utilize their name and likeness, but I doubt it. Instead, it makes one wonder exactly how the world would be different if WIPO didn’t exist, given that its presence has not even made an impact a few miles down the road.
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