This text was handed at around 11 AM on Wednesday morning. Apologies for any typos. This was typed by 3 different people from the hard copy distributed by the International Bureau.
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STANDING COMMITTEE ON COPYRIGHT AND RELATED RIGHTS
Sixteenth Session, March 10 to 12, 2008-03-12
DRAFT CONCLUSIONS
Protection of audiovisual performances
It is 10:25 AM here in Geneva and the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) has yet to begin. The buzz in the hallways indicates that Finland, Italy, Senegal and Canada are vying for leadership of this Committee which will have important ramifications for WIPO’s work on limitations and exceptions, the public domain, competition and access to knowledge. From our perspective, we hope that the this Committee will augur in the fresh winds of change that will change the direction of WIPO’s work on copyright and related rights towards a positive agenda.
WIPO Member States attending the WIPO Committee on Development and Intellectual Property have been invited to a tequila tasting event on 6 March 2008 at the Hotel de Paix coinciding with the candidacy of the Mexican candidate (Jorge Amigo) to the position of Director General of WIPO. The text of the invitation is reproduced below.
The newly created WIPO Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP) is meeting this week in Geneva from 3 March – 7 March 2008. The chair of the CDIP is Ambassador Trevor Clarke of Barbados. Today the discussion has focused mainly on the rules of procedure and modalities governing this Committee. Unfortunately, finding the 45 Development Agenda recommendations adopted at the WIPO General Assembly in September/October 2007 on the WIPO website is not easy. Continue Reading
KEI Statement to the WIPO Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP)
March 3, 2008
Without much fanfare save a press release bereft of critical detail, the WIPO Secretariat hosted an international round table on from 26-27 November 2007 which brought together 15 leading economists to discuss the “economics of intellectual property (IP)”.
According to the press release,
At the first Internet Governance Forum launched in Athens in the winter of 2006, the prevailing perception of open standards was that of an arcane, technical subject confined to obscure standard setting organizations staffed by computer scientists, engineers and technologists. It is perhaps testament to the efforts of the Dynamic Coalition of Open Standards (DCOS), created in Athens in 2006 that open standards has come to the fore of the 2nd Internet Governance Forum in Rio de Janeiro.
Richard Kjeldgaard, a former Senior Counsellor in the Biotechnology and Genetic Resources Division of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and now employed by the U.S. based Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) performed his role as “bouncer” admirably today at a luncheon organized by the Biotechnology Industry Organization.
Walking around the marbled corridors of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) during its 43rd General Assembly, one cannot help but feel a palpable sense of an Organization under siege. Heightened security detail, ostensibly for the protection of the institution and the assembled delegates, was referred by one insider as justification for WIPO maintaining the current levels for patent filing fees.
The outgoing General Assembly Chair, Enrique Manalo (Ambassador, Philippines) commenced the 43th session of the WIPO General Assembly at 10:23 AM (Central European Time). Ambassador Manalo highlighted the success of Development Agenda negotiations as a hallmark of his tenure as Chair over the course of 2 years.