WIPO hosts Conference on Open Innovation: Collaborative Projects and the Future of Knowledge (22-23 January 2014)

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) will host a “Conference on Open Innovation: Collaborative Projects and the Future of Knowledge” on 22-23 January 2014 at its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

The origins of this conference on open collaborative development models is predicated upon Recommendation 36 of the WIPO Development Agenda which states:

To exchange experiences on open collaborative projects such as the Human Genome Project as well as on intellectual property models.

Project CDIP/6/6 REV endeavors to implement Recommendation 36. This conference is the fourth phase of WIPO’s implementation of Recommendation 36:

The organization of an Expert Meeting to exchange best practices on open collaborative projects such as the Human Genome Project, the European Commission’s Open Living Labs Project, the Prize Proposals submitted by the Governments of Bangladesh, Barbados, Bolivia and Suriname to the WHO Expert Working Group on R&D Financing, and other private firms experiences such as InnoCentive, the Merck Gene Index and Natura.

In WIPO’s words,

This Global Conference will feature 17 High-Level Speakers from developed and developing countries as well as roundtable discussions on open innovation. Its objective is to exchange best practices on open collaborative projects for public ventures as well as private firms in various industries and fields of interest. This Conference draws on the experience of global experts in the area of open innovation in academia and industry (including the film industry) and provides key issues to consider when implementing the concepts of open innovation as well as tools for launching open collaborations in the developing world.

The Dutch architect, Rem Koolhaas, (recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, 2000) will deliver a keynote address on “The Future of Knowledge.” As the Human Genome Project is explicitly referenced in Recommendation 36, it is perhaps fitting that Tim Hubbard, Genomics England, King’s College London, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and a member of KEI’s board, will present on “Sequencing the Human Genome: The Project Archetype for Collaborative Innovation.” Samir Brahmachari, Director General, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India, will deliver a keynote address on
Open Collaborations in the Emerging World: New Paradigms Coupled with an Eastward-Shifting Center of Balance for Innovation.” Richard Wilder, Associate General Counsel, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will deliver a keynote address on “Creative Collaborations behind Technological Innovations that Work for the Poor.” H.E. Jean Philbert Nsengimana, Minister of Youth and Information and Communication Technologies, Rwanda, will deliver a keynote address on “ICTs as the Enabling Vehicle for a Global Innovation Grid.” Michael Shrage, Research Fellow, Sloan School of Management, MIT, Cambridge, MA, will present on “Interoperability: A New Paradigm for Fostering Collaborative Innovation.”

Peter Beyer, Senior Advisor at the World Health Organization, and Katy Athersuch, Medical Information and Access Policy Adviser, Médecins Sans Frontières, will co-moderate the session on “Open innovation best practices for public ventures and future visions for open collaborations” featuring Hubbard and Shrage. James Packard Love, Director, Knowledge Ecology International, will moderate the session on “Open innovation best practices for public ventures and private firms.”

The full program which includes sessions on Film and innovative collaborations, Large innovation infrastructure projects based on open collaborations and Practical implementation of open innovation in the developing world and tools for open collaborations can be found here: http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/mdocs/en/wipo_inn_ge_14/wipo_inn_ge_14_provisional_program.pdf.

The genesis of Recommendation 36 on open collaborative development models dates back to 2003; the following text is taken from a piece published by KEI on 24 February 2012.

In examining the antecedents of Recommendation 36 on open collaborative projects, the International Bureau should pay heed to a letter from 69 prominent scientists, economists, academics, activists and other actors (including Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz, Sir John Sulston and Harold Varmus) addressed to Dr. Kamil Idris (former Director-General of the WIPO) on 7 July 2003 requesting WIPO to convene a meeting in 2004 to examine open collaborative models[1]. Specifically, the letter requesting the meeting stated,

[i]n recent years there has been an explosion of open and collaborative projects to create public goods. These projects are extremely important, and they raise profound questions regarding appropriate intellectual property policies. They also provide evidence that one can achieve a high level of innovation in some areas of the modern economy without intellectual property protection, and indeed excessive, unbalanced, or poorly designed intellectual property protections may be counter-productive. We ask that the World Intellectual Property Organization convene a meeting in calendar year 2004 to examine these new open collaborative development models, and to discuss their relevance for public policy.

Initially, the International Bureau seemed willing to convene such a meeting as reported in Nature[2] and the Washington Post[3] but after objections from the United States of America in 2003 regarding the mission of WIPO[4], the meeting was canceled. The dispute over the 2003 request was widely reported, and stimulated a public debate on the mission of WIPO. This was discussed in a one day Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) meeting in Lisbon on the WIPO Work Program, and was one of the motivations for the 2004 proposal for the WIPO development agenda.

On 26 August 2004, the governments of Argentina and Brazil submitted a formal proposal to the International Bureau “relating to the establishment of a new development agenda within WIPO requesting that the proposal be distributed and added to the agenda of this session of the WIPO General Assembly, pursuant to Rule 5(4) of the WIPO General Rules of Procedure” (WIPO/GA/31/11). This submission, intent on integrating the development dimension into all aspects of WIPO’s activities, including norm-setting activities and technical assistance programs, launched an intensive three year negotiation, and ultimately to the establishment of the WIPO Development Agenda. Contained within the original Argentina/Brazil proposal in the section IV on the “Development Dimension and Intellectual Property Norm-Setting: Safeguarding Public Interest Flexibilities” was the following:

In order to tap into the development potential offered by the digital environment, it is important to bear in mind the relevance of open access models for the promotion of innovation and creativity. In this regard, WIPO should consider undertaking activities with a view to exploring the promise held by open collaborative projects to develop public goods, as exemplified by the Human Genome Project and Open Source Software (WIPO/GA/31/11).

In their subsequent elaboration of the original Argentina/Brazil proposal to establish a development agenda for WIPO, the group of Friends of Development submitted a proposal to WIPO (IIM/1/4) which stated,

WIPO should be open to examining non-intellectual property-type and/or non-exclusionary systems for fostering creativity, innovation and the transfer of technology, for example, open collaborative models for research, open and free software development, and compensatory liability systems and the development of technology for the public good, while recognizing the benefits and costs of each system.

As noted earlier by the Friends of Development, the individual recommendations of the Development Agenda should not be compartmentalized in silos but rather be treated as cross-cutting issues. Although Recommendation 36, is grouped in Cluster D on Assessment, Evaluation and Impact Studies, it is inextricably linked to Cluster B on “Norm-setting, flexibilities, public policy and public domain” and Cluster C on “Technology Transfer, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Access to Knowledge”.

WIPO’s implementation of the project on open collaborative projects should integrate the original spirit which engendered Recommendation 36 by conducting an in-depth examination of alternative models to foster creativity, innovation and the transfer of technology that are not predicated upon monopolistic and/or non-exclusionary systems. This goes beyond the initial work by the Secretariat, which has largely focused on crowd sourcing innovation strategies that do not involve the production of knowledge as a public good.

[1] Sign-on letter from 69 scientists and economists to Kamil Idris, Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization requesting that WIPO host a meeting on open and collaborative development, July 7, 2003, www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/kamil-idris-7july2003.pdf.
[2] Declan Butler, “Drive for patent-free innovation gathers pace, Nature, Volume 424, 10 July 2003.
[3] Jonathan Krim, “The Quiet War Over Open-Source”, The Washington Post, August 21, 2003.
[4] Declan Butler, “Business backlash kills off software meeting, Nature, Volume 424, 28 August 2003.