WIPO SCCR 34 May 1, 2017 Day 1: Agenda and Election of New Chair and Vice Chairs

It’s a particularly important meeting, as you know, because it’s the last meeting of the standing committee before the assemblies will take place, the WIPO General Assembly in October of this year. So it’s the last opportunity for this committee to prepare any items that you would wish to see go forward to the assemblies for decision in October of this year.

Your meeting in November last year, I think if I may say, led to significant progress in finding common ground in addressing a number of the challenges that lie before the committee. As you know, we have an extremely busy agenda this week. There are a significant number of items under consideration, historically in terms of length of time, of course, the issue of broadcasting has been around for over 20 years now, and that’s an area in which, as you know, state of play is that a consolidated text was produced, a revised consolidated text on various elements of a proposed treaty was prepared by the outgoing chair.

And the objective of this session, of course, will be to discuss that text and the elements around it. And to fine tune the proposal and build a solid basis for a common understanding on the issues which we now confront. There’s also the issue of exceptions and limitations which is another long standing item on the agenda, and there are different elements to it as you know, libraries and archives, educational and research institutions and persons with other disabilities. I think you now have before you as a committee an enormous amount of information as a consequence of the significant number of studies and surveys on all of those issues that you have requested. And now I think it’s a question of collecting the material available and analyzing it, synthesizing it and seeing what you wish to do in order to look for solutions to the issues that you consider require addressing in that area.

There are two newer items, of course, on the agenda. One of those is the proposal that was put forward originally by GRULAC to look at the state of play with respect to copyright and the digital environment, and that is just getting off the ground. It’s an area of exploration, if I may say. But an extremely important area of exploration but one in which this organization has been active for a significant period of time. Active early on with the 1996 treaties, and with the Beijing Treaty. Active also in promoting a discussion on the global digital market with the conference that we held in this regard last year.

We also have an item that — on which work started really last Friday with the very thought provoking and successful international conference on the resale right, the artists resale right, and that item was borne from an initiative a number of years ago from the delegations of Senegal and Congo in particular, to see it addressed at the international level. So it’s a big agenda, and as everyone is fully aware, not an easy environment to make progress in any field, whatever it might be. So we very much hope that you are able to take forward the multilateral discussion on these extremely important areas and look for results where this is possible to achieve.

I would like to express our deep gratitude and appreciation to Mr. Martin Moscoso of Peru, outstanding chairman of the committee, as you know, Mr. Moscoso was chair for two terms and he served with great dedication and commitment and enthusiasm, and I think was responsible for leading the advancement of the work throughout the period of his mandate.

Let me also thank the outgoing vice chair, Mr. Santiago Savalos for his excellent support.
So that brings us to the first item on the agenda following the open of the standing committee which is the election of the Chair and the vice chairs, two vice chairs. There have been discussions taking place amongst the various regional groups and in those informal discussions a consensus was reached with respect toes offices that you would like to see lead the work of the committee over the next term.

I turn now to the floor, to see proposals with respect to those offices. Please. And I recognize the delegation of Indonesia.

> DIRECTOR GENERAL: I thank the delegation of Colombia for expressing the support of the Latin American Caribbean group for the various proposals. I think we have complete unanimity, which is a very good start for the committee and I have great pleasure, therefore, in declaring elected and in congratulating Mr. Darren Tang the chief executive officer of the intellectual property office of Singapore as chair of the standing committee and as vice chairs, Mr. AbAbdul Aziz Dieng and Mr. Karol koscinski and I would invite the newly elected officers to come and preside over the meeting.

SECRETARIAT: Thank you, Chair. The notional allocation of time for the ming that has been discussed with the regional coordinators and previewed at a briefing last week is the following. This morning’s session, we would have the opening of the session, and then continue with the election of the officers, administrative agenda items. After those matters are finished, we would move to open the agenda item and discuss protection of broadcasting organizations. That discussion would continue through the close of the session on Tuesday, May 2.

On Wednesday, May 3, we would start with limitations and exceptions. We would then continue with that through the morning session on Thursday, May 4. For the afternoon session, on Thursday, May 4, we would return to the artists resale royalty right.

On Friday, May 5, in the morning session, we would work on analysis of copyright related to the digital environment and then in the afternoon session on Friday, May 5th, we would handle the other matters which would include the Chair’s summary and any recommendations the Committee plans to send to the General Assembly.
So that is the notional allocation of time, Chair. Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Michelle