The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations, and has as its core objectives the promotion of creative intellectual activity and the facilitation of the transfer of technology related to intellectual property to the developing countries in order to accelerate economic, social and cultural development (art. 1 of the 1974 Agreement between the UN and the WIPO). It has 181 member states, and administers 21 international treaties. The headquarters of WIPO are in Geneva, Switzerland. The United Nations, or UN, is an international organization established in 1945 and now made up of 191 states. ... 1974 is a common year starting on Tuesday (click on link for calendar). ... Geneva (French: Genève) is the second-most populous city in Switzerland located where Lake Geneva (French: Lac Léman, but the Genevois are fond of calling it Lac de Genève) empties into the Rhône River. ...

History

The predecessor to WIPO was the BIRPI (Bureaux Internationaux Réunis pour la Protection de la Propriété Intellectuelle, French acronym for United International Bureau for the Protection of Intellectual Property), which had been set up in 1893 to administer the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations formed from the initial letter or letters of words, such as NATO and XHTML, and are pronounced in a way that is distinct from the full pronunciation of what the letters stand for. ... 1893 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, sometimes called the Berne Union or Berne Convention, adopted at Berne in 1886, first established the recognition of copyrights between sovereign nations. ...

WIPO was formally created by the Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization (Signed at Stockholm on July 14, 1967 and as amended on September 28, 1979). Under Article 3 of this Convention, WIPO seeks to "promote the protection of intellectual property throughout the world." WIPO became a specialized agency of the UN in 1974, as above-mentioned. The Stockholm City Hall Stockholm  listen is the capital and the largest city of Sweden. ... July 14 is the 195th day (196th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 170 days remaining. ... 1967 was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Unlike other branches of the United Nations, WIPO has enormous financial resources which are generated from the collection of fees by the International Bureau (IB) under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, which it administers. The Patent Cooperation Treaty (or PCT) provides a unified procedure for filing patent applications to protect inventions worldwide. ...

Critique

WIPO is a one country, one vote forum. This is important, because there is a significant North-South divide in the politics of intellectual property. During the 1960s and 70s, developing countries were able to block expansions to intellectual property treaties (such as universal pharmaceutical patents) which might have occurred through WIPO. The North-South divide is the divide which separates the rich North or the developed world, from the poor South otherwise known as the developing or third world. ... Events and trends The 1960s was a turbulent decade of change around the world. ... Events and trends Although in the United States and in many other Western societies the 1970s are often seen as a period of transition between the turbulent 1960s and the more conservative 1980s and 1990s, many of the trends that are associated widely with the Sixties, from the Sexual Revolution... A developing country is a country with low average income compared to the world average. ...

In the 1980s, this led to the United States "forum shifting" intellectual property standard-setting out of WIPO and into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (later the WTO), where the North had greater control of the agenda. This strategy paid dividends with the enactment of TRIPs. Events and trends The 1980s marked an abrupt shift towards more conservative lifestyles after the momentous cultural revolutions which took place in the 1960s and 1970s and the definition of the AIDS virus in 1981. ... General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (usually abbreviated GATT) functions as the foundation of the WTO trading system, and remains in force, although the 1995 Agreement contains an updated version of it to replace the original 1947 one. ... The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an international organization which oversees a large number of agreements defining the rules of trade between its member states (WTO, 2004a). ... The WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) is an international agreement on the subject of intellectual property. It covers copyright, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, industrial designs, geographical indicia and integrated circuit layouts. ...

In recent years, WIPO has sought to aggressively promote the interests of intellectual property owners. Much of the important work is done through committees, including for example the Standing Committee on Patents (SCP), the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), the Advisory Committee on Enforcement (ACE), and the Intergovernmental Committee (IGC) on Access to Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore, and the Working Group on Reform of the Patent Cooperation Treaty.

Related topics

• Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure
• Geneva Declaration on the Future of the World Intellectual Property Organization
• Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property
• Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT)
• Patent Law Treaty (PLT)
• Substantive Patent Law Treaty (SPLT)
• Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy
• World Intellectual Wealth Organisation
• WIPO Copyright Treaty
• WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty
• World Intellectual Property Day (April 26)

The Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure, or Budapest Treaty, is an international treaty signed in Budapest, Hungary, on April 28, 1977. ... The Geneva Declaration on the Future of the World Intellectual Property Organization is a document signed by a number of non-profit organizations, scientists, academics and other individuals urging the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to focus on the needs of developing countries with respect to intellectual property legislation. ... The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, signed in Paris, France, on March 20, 1883, is an important and one of the first intellectual property treaties. ... The Patent Cooperation Treaty (or PCT) provides a unified procedure for filing patent applications to protect inventions worldwide. ... The Patent Law Treaty (PLT) is a patent law multilateral treaty concluded on June 1, 2000 in Geneva, Switzerland, by 53 States and one intergovernmental organization, the European Patent Organisation. ... The Substantive Patent Law Treaty (SPLT) is a proposed international patent law treaty aimed at harmonizing substantive points of patent law. ... Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy is a policy of ICANN for the resolution of disputes over domain names. ... World Intellectual Wealth Organisation (WIWO) is a proposal of the Free Software Foundation in Europe for the enhancement of open content, free software and other forms of libre copyright approaches by the establishment of a new worldwide organisation or through a refreshed WIPO. External link Report by Wikinerds Portal Categories... The WIPO Copyright Treaty, adopted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 1996, provides additional protections for copyright deemed necessary in the modern information era. ... The WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) was adopted in Geneva on December 20, 1996. ... The World Intellectual Property Day is celebrated each year on April 26 since 2001. ...

External links

• The official WIPO website (http://www.wipo.int/)
• Critics of the WIPO: FFII, CPTech (http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/)
  • May 10 2004, Geneva: WIPO Geneva Patent Policy Session (http://swpat.ffii.org/events/2004/wipo05/)
  • 2003/2004: Wipo bangs the Drum (http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/wipo1104) - WIPO has just published a brochure, "Intellectual Property - A Power Tool for Economic Growth", aimed at policy-makers in businesses and governments worldwide, and as the preface puts it, "written from a definite perspective -- that IP is good".
  • Substantive Patent Law Treaty(SPLT) Draft (http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/wipo-splt01/): Unlimited Patentability and Strict Limits on Patent Quality to be hardcoded into international law.
  • 2003, Geneva: Background on WIPO (http://www.iprsonline.org/ictsd/docs/WIPO_Musungu_Dutfield.pdf/) Sisule F Musungu and Graham Dutfield, Multilateral agreements and a TRIPS-plus world: The World Intellectual Property Organisation
• EFF: Deep Links (Weblog)
  • 2004/11/18: Blogging WIPO (http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/002115.php)
  • 2004/11/18: Blogging WIPO, Day 2 (http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/002116.php)
  • 2004/11/19: Blogging WIPO, Day 3 (http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/002130.php)
  • 2005/04/11: Blogging WIPO's Development Agenda Meeting - Day 1 (http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/003509.php)
  • 2005/04/14: Blogging WIPO's Development Agenda Meeting - Day 2 (http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/003511.php)
  • 2005/04/14: Blogging WIPO: Final Resolution (http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/003512.php)

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World Intellectual Property Organization