[WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: [Wsis-pct] IP-Watch: Intellectual Property Issues Kept Off WSIS Agenda

[Milton Mueller]

>>> avri at acm.org 12/9/2005 4:24 PM >>>
>Forgive me if I misunderstood, but i thought that the consensus, or  
>at least rough consensus, in this WG was that the WGIG/WSIS should  
>stay away from the topic of IP unless it could be transformed into  
>the discussion on PCT.  I also thought there was a general feeling  
>that it was better to have the topic be ignored then to have it dealt  
>with incorrectly.

Avri:
Major mistake. First, there was no consensus about staying away from IPR or PCT issues. (note my terminological agnosticism) A few members of the PCT working group were upset that none of them were selected for the WGIG or recommended by the IG caucus. (As I have noted before, they may have had reason to be upset, but no need to go into that now.) They therefore decided that they "owned" the issue of IPR/PCT, and that therefore the WGIG could not and should not deal with it. 

The idea that the issue would be dealt with "incorrectly" in WGIG was advanced ONLY by these few disgruntled PCT working group members. For the vast majority of people in the IG caucus and, I think, among WSIS-CS, the creation of the WGIG represented a huge opportunity to raise issues related to IPR/PCT and bring them to international attention. This should be obvious: there was no representative of WIPO or the USG and only one major representative of multinational business on the WGIG. That means that the usual obstacles to debating these issues more clearly were not there. Anyone who believed that IPR/PCT could be dealt with "better" in WIPO or some other forum was simply wrong. And the people who made that argument, while knowledgeabout about free software were not, frankly, known for their knowledge of international institutions, international politics, and international policy making processes.

>I know that in the WGIg i stayed away from the topic for the most part  
>because i felt it was one the CS PCT WG preferred for us to stay away  
>from.

No, only certain members of the PCT WG. Robin Gross, e.g., was a part of that wg but she obviously would like to have seen WGIG and the WSIS statement go more into IPR/PCT. 

Incidentally, one reason PCT WG members were not recommended for WGIG, in my opinion (although I personally had nothing to do with the selection process) MIGHT just be that they spent more time trying to train people to substitute "PCT" for "IPR," instead of addressing the substantive policy issues in a strategically effective way.

I await the wrath.....;-) 

--MM