[WSIS CS-Plenary] WIPO Development Agenda - NGO's and academics need to get organized

[karen banks]

Dear all,

Some further information on the WIPO/CS participation issues raised by 
Jamie Love from CPTech last week.

I have only included text related to CS and participation - but please do 
visit the list archive, which is public, here: 
http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/ip-health/ - for additional info.

karen

------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[Ip-health] WIPO Development Agenda - NGO's and academics need to 
get organized
Date: 	Wed, 23 Feb 2005 12:31:22 -0500
From: 	James Love <james.love at cptech.org>
To: 	Ip-health <ip-health at lists.essential.org>

1.  Accreditation fiasco.

The first big official WIPO/Geneva meetings on the WIPO development agenda 
will be the week of April 11.   WIPO appears to be severely limiting 
accreditation for this meeting, by for example

(1) denying all requests for ad hoc accreditation (needed for NGOs that are 
not already permanent WIPO NGO observers),

(2) indicating that permanent accredited NGOs may be limited to 1 or 2 
member delegations, greatly skewing participation in favor of the 
right-owner NGOs, of which there a large number.  (see who has permanent 
NGO observer status here: 
http://www.wipo.int/about-wipo/en/members/admission/pdf/observers.pdf), and

(3) rejecting/ignoring requests that WIPO balance participation between 
right-owner and consumer interest NGOs.

These three actions together pretty much speak for themselves.  I encourage 
groups interested in development and IP to petition the WIPO Secretariat 
*and* member states to change this deplorable and completely
inappropriate policy on participation in these events.

....]

In general, if NGOS COMPLAIN ABOUT WIPO, THEY NEED TO MAKE SPECIFIC
CONCRETE PROPOSALS FOR THE DEVELOPMMENT AGENDA.  And -- SOONER, RATHER
THAN LATER.

Jamie
--
James Love, Director, CPTech, http://www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology in Washington, DC
PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036, USA
Tel.:  1.202.387.8030, fax: 1.202.234.5176