Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest, 21 January 2009
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND: 2009 is poised to be an important year for the World Intellectual Property Organisation as the organisation faces many challenges, particularly in terms of balancing the interests of developing and developed countries and addressing pressing public policy concerns such as public health, food security and climate change. The protection of traditional knowledge is an area of WIPO’s work in which many stakeholders have pointed to the need for greater movement and even an agreement — not only to deal with greater protection at the domestic level but also with cross-border misappropriation of traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions … However, the lack of consensus at the last meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC) in October, on a possible intersessional mechanism to accelerate the committee’s work reflected the continued gap between country positions even on procedural issues which were perceived by some as possibly prejudicing their positions on future substantive work. Read the article …
