A press release from the World Intellectual Property
Organization, "WIPO & Donor Community to Explore Ways to Enhance use of
IP for Development", was issued today and it makes interesting reading.
The text reads as follows: "The World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO) is hosting an international conference in Geneva on
November 5 and 6, 2009 [hey, that's this week!] to help improve
understanding among the donor community of the key developmental role
of IP [this makes a change from seeking to improve understanding among
the developing nations], to encourage their support for intellectual
property-related development projects and improve access by developing
countries, particularly least developed countries (LDCs) and countries
in Africa, to donor funding for such projects [donor funding has to be
(i) available on free or affordable terms, (ii) adequate for each
project and (iii) securely ring-fenced to protect it against
imaginative ways in which it is caused to evaporate before the project
is completed -- or in some cases, started].

The Conference will demonstrate, in particular, to bilateral and
multilateral donor agencies, the relevance of intellectual property
(IP) to development and to explain how developing countries can use IP
to facilitate their economic, social and cultural development, in
particular in relation to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). [if
the agencies don't know this yet, what hope is there for the rest of
us!]

The Conference will focus on three main themes: Aid for Trade; Science,
Technology and Innovation for Development; and the Digital Divide
[themes 1 and 3 have the advantage of having cute names, though theme 2
is equally important]. It will bring together presentations of real
life examples of IP in action in developing countries from a diverse
set of presenters such as: a film producer from Nigeria (Madu
Chikwendu, MCM Group, Nigeria), two African designers involved in
exporting to developed country markets (Ronel Jordaan and Cheick
Diallo), a rose breeder from Kenya (Bas Smit of Kordes Roses), a coffee
producer from Ethiopia (Tadesse Meskela, General Manager, Oromia Coffee
Farmers Co-operative Union, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia), a South African
publisher (Brian Wafawarowa, New Africa Books), the Senegalese music
industry (Rokhaya Daba Sarr, Bureau Export de la Musique Africaine &
Tringa Musiques et développement) and a traditional knowledge expert
(Ann Sintoyia Tome, Maasai Cultural Heritage Foundation Kenya) [The
IPKat hopes that these presentations will be made available even to
those of us who are unable to attend. Apart from the fact that they're
generally much more entertaining than lectures from lawyers and
politicos, if properly pitched they can inspire both donors and
like-minded enterprising colleagues].

These real life experiences will be accompanied by a series of high
level roundtable discussions with senior policy-makers [There had to be
a downside ...]. The Conference will be opened by WIPO Director General
Francis Gurry followed by introductory keynote speeches by the United
Nations Under-Secretary General, Special Adviser on Africa, Cheick Sidi
Diarra and the Brazilian Under-Secretary for Economic and Technological
Affairs, Ambassador Pedro Carneiro de Mendonça.

The conference is an important step in building a relationship between
WIPO, its member states and the donor community and offers an
opportunity for developing countries to engage with the donor community
on IP-related issues and for WIPO to foster partnerships in support of
improved access to funding.

While implementation of the WIPO Development Agenda is provided for
under the Organization’s regular budget, the mobilization of
extra-budgetary resources is seen as a means of broadening the impact
of WIPO’s development work in general and speeding up implementation of
recommendations under the WIPO Development Agenda in particular [Trying
to interpret this, the IPKat thinks it means "WIPO has enough cash to
run conferences like this, but it doesn't have the funds to finance the
sort of projects it's encouraging]. This initiative is in support of
the WIPO Development Agenda which calls for the mobilization of
additional resources through donor funding, the establishment of funds
in trust and other voluntary funds within WIPO specifically for LDCs
and countries in Africa to promote the use of IP for social, economic
and cultural development.

Anyone interested in participating in the meeting, which is open to the
public, is requested to complete the on-line registration form".The
IPKat, who rather likes this WIPO initiative, is fascinated by the
concept of the "donor community". Viewed from the point of view of
recipients, donors are a community, bound together by the privilege of
IP ownership; but, viewed by each other, donors are often fiercely
suspicious of one another and competitive to the point of being, well,
not the best of friends. To them, it's recipients who are a community,
bound together by their poverty, their lack of resources and the
absence of an innovation-friendly soil in which to plant the seeds of
creativity. Merpel adds, with globalisation we're all one big
community, aren't we?

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Posted By Jeremy to The IPKat - for IP in a changing world on
11/02/2009 08:15:00 PM