"[...] Developed and developing countries faced off Monday over whether and how the U.N. World Intellectual Property Organisation’s mission should be transformed to better address the needs of developing countries.
The basis for the three-day discussion ending Wednesday at the Geneva-based WIPO is a developing country proposal to change WIPO into a more typical U.N. organisation by raising the profile of development concerns throughout its mission.
The United States, the United Kingdom and others say there is no need for a new body within WIPO, but acknowledge that improvements could be made to the existing system such as through better technical assistance to developing countries. The United States argued for the creation of a partnership database to improve developing country capacity to benefit from intellectual property, and said the issue should be placed into the existing Permanent Committee on Cooperation for Development Related to Intellectual Property (PCIPD).
'We don't believe the U.N. needs another development agency,' said the lead U.S. delegate. 'We do not support setting up new bodies.' He cited the U.N. Development Program and the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development as the key UN agencies with specific development mandates. [...]"
Probably at the WIPO, a very complex mixture of interests and political pressure seem to have emerged:
Industrial nations seeking to maintain and further develop the present system of Intellectual Property;
Developing nations seeking to obtain specific gains from a modified hand-tailored system of Intellctual Property serving their own interests; and
a bunch of anti-globalisation and anti-IP NGOs seeking to make their own use of the motion of the developing nations for destructing the system of Intellectual Property as it stands now.
Of course, these interests are not completely disjunct; however, I think they can well be identified as separate entities.
Intellectual Property Watch 