Last week, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Committee for Development and IP (CDIP) met to discuss the organizations latest proposals for implementing WIPO's Development Agenda (for the background of the WIPO's Development Agenda, see CIEL's Citizen's Guide to WIPO, and IP Quarterly Updates for recent developments in the CDIP). As it has in the past, CIEL participated in the Committee as a permanent observer.
On the agenda was the "Project on Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer: Common Challenges - Building Solutions" (document CDIP/4/7). Details on the project and CIEL's concerns and suggestions are available below (see Oct 15th 2009).
Consistent with many of the problems identified by CIEL, a coalition of self-professed "like-minded" developing countries immediately began to articulate a long list of additional considerations for the technology transfer project. One such country, Brazil, intervened that it would refuse to feel pressured to prematurely adopt this or any project on technology transfer, particularly without any discussion in the CDIP of the Development Agenda Recommendations on which technology transfer projects were based. Another "like-minded" country, Egypt, relayed a long-list of considerations that it wished to have discussed before any project on technology transfer was undertaken.
The outpouring of concerned interventions appeared to catch both the WIPO Secretariat and Developed Countries off-guard. Because the "like-minded" countries were unprepared to submit their lengthy list of comments, concerns and suggestions in writing, technology transfer discussions were postponed until the following meeting, in the spring of 2010. The "like-minded" countries are to submit a written statement by the 15th of December, 2009, with responses due the 31st of January, 2010.
The possibility of examining the transfer of climate-related technologies (for mitigation and adaptation), or at least a small subset of them, appears slim. One small - but vocal - developing country, Sri Lanka, explicitly stated that her delegation did not want climate technologies included in the Technology Transfer Project.
If this represents the view of developing countries as a whole, it is a strong shift from what India stated recently in the 2009 WIPO General Assembly, when they stated, "[w]e need to speed up the development and deployment of new green technologies" implying a greater role of WIPO in making this happen (see 24th Sept. 2009).
At the same 2009 WIPO General Assembly, WIPO's Director General announced that he did not see IP posing a barrier to the development and transfer of climate technologies (see 23rd Sept. 2009). Simultaneously at the General Assembly, the US Chamber of Commerce was also lobbying strongly against what they called the "rhetoric" that IPRs impede access to climate technologies.
Group B (the coalition of developed countries) expressed support for studying "environmental technologies" under the Technology Transfer project.
If developing countries are indeed shying away from examining Climate Technologies within WIPO, it could be perceived that they no longer see IP as being a significant barrier to accessing climate technologies, which has been their position at the UNFCCC negotiations leading up to Copenhagen later this year. Giving this impression is not necessarily in the best interest of developing countries because it is not clear whether IPRs present a significant barrier with respect to many climate technologies.
Or rather, the Director General's blanket assertion - that IPRs are not a barrier - has given the impression that any study by WIPO on the transfer of climate technologies will have a predetermined outcome. Given the breadth of technologies implicated by climate change, from drought resistant plants to diseases to large engineering endeavors, this blanket assertion should not dissuade developing countries from examining in an empirical fashion, which technologies are or are not being transferred over what alternatives. A well-structured empirical analysis on technology transfer will not permit WIPO to interject its own conclusion on the results, while it would allow for the analysis of the effect of policy decisions on technology transfer to be examined from a baseline level by independent experts.
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