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We found, by browsing the internet, that the two main issues put forward by NGOs are first, the appropriation of genetic resources and traditional knowledge, and secondly, the Public Health and access to medicine.
First of all, about the first issue, the positive point is that it can benefit national economies if it is manage appropriately at international level. However we face today misappropriations of biological and genetic resources and traditional knowledge, according to NGOs. This is due to the fact that the current IP system allows right to be claimed over these, while local communities do not have access to defensive mechanism to protect these or offensive one to claim it.
NGOs claim that the IP system is encouraging biopiracy and that there is no benefit sharing. According to them, we need a system to protect farmers who are subordinated to plant breeders and we need to prevent misappropriation. The system needs to implement balancing rights between farmers and breeders in order to create an equitable sharing and to protect genetic resources and innovations of indigenous and other traditional communities. To illustrate this issue, here is a famous example: farmers in Mexico were cultivating a specific type of beans for centuries until, a few years ago, a huge company discovered it and made a patent on these beans. Since then, farmers cannot use their seeds anymore without paying this company. This illustrates why NGOs wants to change the current IP system. (sources: http://www.kokopelli.asso.fr; http://www.ipngos.org/casestudies/agriculture/index.html)
The second issue discusses public health and access to medicine which is a growing problem in developing countries because medicines are unavailable, inaccessible or unaffordable for those who need them most. This another impact of IP rights. Indeed, TRIPS, WTO agreements, do not reflect the interests of developing countries. Patented medicines cost much more than the “unpatented” or generic version. NGOs have been actively supporting developing countries in their efforts to negotiate solutions to this problems. (source: http://www.ipngos.org/casestudies/publichealth/index.html)
Finally, if we refer to the ICC roadmap, we will now propose some comparisons between the issues we have found and the one the ICC gave.
The fist one concerns environment. In the ICC roadmap, we have learned about the existence of the CBD, the Convention on Biological Diversity, in addition to TRIPS agreements. The CBD’s goal is to conserve biodiversity and to promote access and benefit sharing. However only few of its members states have so far passed laws to enforce it. Moreover, TRIPS must be amended because it is sometimes in contradiction with CBD. There are a lot of discussion today to improve the IPR system and make it more compatible with the protection of environment.
Furthermore, the Patent system concerns both issues. Innovations are proposed today to improve it, the ICC roadmap asserts it. First, there is pressure to provide more informations in patent about genetic resources. Second, some people would like to create a system of “certificates” to prove that biological materials had been obtained legally. This may lead to decrease inequalities in developing countries, such as the one with farmer and their beans in Mexico.
This is the reason why WPO is ongoing work on harmonization of patent laws since 1984.
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I. Global intellectual property issues concerning industries:
The report of the ICC on global IP issues concerning industries considers these issues under three different angles: issues relating to specific IP rights, issues common to various IP rights and issues emerging from interaction between IP and other policy areas.
Nonetheless, there is a general call from businesses for “better international coherence and stability of IP systems” due to the “the increasing globalization of IP-related transactions”. Indeed, be it related to patent, trademarks, design or copyrights, business’ actions tends to enhance international harmonization of IP law and to encourage government’s action in implementing multilateral conventions or agreements regulating IP rights.
Alongside this need for international harmonization of the rules concerning the four pillars of IP rights it is question of dealing with global problems linked with IP, directly (how to enforce IP rights, how to resolve IP disputes, how to deal with counterfeiting and piracy, …) or indirectly (economic and technological development, environment, information technology, data privacy, …).
II. Global intellectual property issues putting forward by NGOs:
NGOs are directly concerned with the future of the international IP system. They deal actively with two main points of contention: “whether or not higher standards of IP protection and harmonization have a positive impact on social, economic and cultural development, particularly in developing countries and whether there is a need for reform in multilateral institutions dealing with IP and innovation in order to ensure that they promote countries’ development objectives related to the promotion of domestic innovation and creativity, investment and technology transfer”.
(http://www.ipngos.org/NGO%20Briefings/The%20WIPO%20Development%20Agenda.pdf)
“NGOs have in the past mainly reacted to policy developments (…). Recently, however, a more proactive form of NGO engagement with intellectual property issues has been apparent. In this respect, there is an increasing focus on alternative frameworks for promoting innovation (…). Copyright is increasingly the focus of NGO work, as is technical assistance in developing countries and patent harmonisation (…)”.
(http://www.ipngos.org/Report/IP-NGOs%20final%20report%20December%202006.pdf)
The limit to this proactive form of engagement is that NGOs and developing countries “try
to prioritise, to focus on what seems more important and to select issues on which they think that their input can be most significant”, being incapable of covering all IP issues.
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By browsing the internet I found an interesting research project of the Queen Mary University of London on “IP-NGOs” : http://www.ipngos.org/
They underline two main issues of IP-NGOs” :
1) Public Health and access to medicine
( see : http://www.ipngos.org/casestudies/publichealth/index.html )
(e.g. : Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) http://www.dndi.org or AIDS Healthcare foundation http://www.aidshealth.org)
– Those NGO’s concerns are generally related to promoting cheaper access to medicine in third countries or creating medicine for diseases that do not constitute a profitable market.
2) Agriculture, genetic resources and traditional knowledge
( see : http://www.ipngos.org/casestudies/agriculture/index.html )
(e.g. : Biowatch http://www.biowatch.org.za or Public Interest Intellectual Property Advisors (PIIPA) http://www.piipa.org)
– Those NGO’s concerns are rather related to economic balance in third countries, for example between the rights of breeders and the rights of the local farmers, or to provide free IP legal advice to third countries.
The ICC road Map and the IP NGO’s have probably the same means in their actions; trying to raise awareness of the importance of IP and trying to influence the IP policy-making, but in my opinion, in two opposite directions.
Where the ICC road map is rather keen on promoting IP, the IP NGOs are rather working on cancelling them.
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Two main issues –among others- are put forward by NGOs concerning IP.
First, the relationship between intellectual property and public health. It is the object of the “campaign for access to essential medicines” of Médecins Sans Frontières, which is aimed at raising awareness on the impact of patents on access to medicine .
Indeed,“patents can have a dramatic impact on access to medicines when they are used to prevent competition. A drug company that holds patents on a medicine has the right to prevent others from manufacturing it and therefore can charge an artificially high price. (…)In developing countries, where people pay for drugs out of their own pockets and very seldom have health insurance, the high price of medicines becomes a question of life and death”. http://www.msfaccess.org/
The second issue concerns agriculture, and more particularly patents on seeds and the right of access to alimentation, which is for example one of the concerns of the Food and Agriculture Organization.
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http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/09/19/russia-intellectual-property-rights-as-ngo-prosecution-tool
–> Russian authorities have confiscated some local NGO’s computers (IRKUTSK case)
http://www.ngopulse.org/category/tags/intellectual-property
–> developing countries must increase IP rights in their economy, until now, those countries were completely denying it
http://ipjustice.org/WIPO/IIM3/NGO.Stmt.IIM3.Dev.Agenda.pdf
–> issue of access to knowledge and technology: citizens should have access to knowledge in respect of the authors’ rights (balance between rights of authors and public interest) + proposition of reforming WIPO norms and practices and study the costs/benefits relation of copyrights, patents, trademarks
http://www.ipngos.org/
–> issue of agriculture, genetic resources and traditional knowledge + issue public health and access to essential medicines (patents and IP rights can block the access and make some medicines unavailable, inaccessible or unaffordable for people who needs it the most)
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The WIPO summarizes the issues that NGO’s have to addres about the IP matter.
In the paper “The WIPO development agenda : the campaign to reform international intellectual property policy-matking”, we can read that there are 2 main points:
First, NGO’s are concerned about ” whether or not higher standards of intellectual property protection and harmonization have a positive impact on social, economic and cultural development”
Second, they are also concerned about “whether there is a need for a form mutllateral institutions dealing with intellectual property and innovation in order to ensure that they promote countries’ developement objectives related to the promotion of domestic innovations and creativity, investment and technology transfert”.
Futhermore, many NGO’s think that international intellectual property regimes, as it isfor the moment, can be potentially damaging for developping countries.
(source: http://www.ipngos.org/NGO Briefing/The WIPO Development Agenda.pdf)
If we look at one particular NGO in the field of IP, the Free Software Foundation, for example, is fighting to promote a free software in a world in which we use more and more computers. According to them, a free software is a software that we can share, modify or study.
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What are the global IP issues that NGOs are putting forward today?
IP rights can play a role in helping to reduce world property and hunger, for improvement and education, and help ensuring sustainability. NGOs make contributions to promote the concerns of developing countries especially in two fields:
– Public health and access to medicine
– Agriculture, genetic resources and traditional knowledge
In an article published on http://www.ipngos.org, in December 2006 (“NGOs, IP rights and Multilateral institutions” by Duncan Matthews), the roles of NGOs in these two fields are explained.
In the field of public health and access to medicine, NGOs (such as MSF and Oxfam) assisted in focusing attention on the fact that patents can be a barrier to access to medicine and put pressure on governments until the Doha Declaration was signed (about public health).
In the field of agriculture and genetic resources, NGOs (such as Gaia and Greenpeace) demonstrated that the problem of access to medicine was also caused by a lack of genetic resources and traditional knowledge that are needed for improvement and technological advancement of society.
Specific NGOs play also a role in most specific fields such as the FSF (Free Software Foundation).
NGOs also have a role in participating to WIPO.
When we compare the results of our research to the ICC Roadmap, we can notice that NGOs fight for basic issues (agriculture and medicine), while the Roadmap explain the greater role of IP in new technologies (digital technologies, electronic communication, Internet).
There is clearly a gap between the developing countries and the richer countries about IP rights and their protections.
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I found, by browsing the internet, that NGO’s are putting forward two main issues today: the appropriation of genetic resources and traditional knowledge, and the public health and access to medicine.
They first claim that IP law made plant valuable tradable assets. This may be positive because it can benefit national economies if it is manage appropriately at the international level. However, it can also lead to misappropriation of biological and genetic ressources and traditional knowledge. The main concern of NGO’s is that current IP system allows right to be claimed over it, while local communities do not have access neither to defensive mechanism to protect it neither to offensive mechanism to claim it. According to NGO’s, IP system is encouraging biopiracy and it prevents any benefit sharing. We need a system to protect farmers being subordinated to plant breeders and we need to prevent misappropriations. The NGO’s conclude by claiming balancing rights between farmers and breeders, an equitable sharing and a protection of genetical ressources and of indegenous and other traditional knowledge (sources: http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/studies/publication/genetic_resources.htm; http://www.ipngos.org/casestudies/agriculture/index.html)
The second issue is about Public Health and access to medicine which is a growing problem in developing countries due to the fact that medicine are unavailable, innaccessible or unaffordable for those who need them most. According to NGO’s this is the impact of IP Rights. Indeed patented medicines cost much more than “unpatented” ones and generic version . Moreover, WTO agreements do not reflect the interests of developing countries. (sources: http://www.ipngos.org/casestudies/publichealth/index.html; Duncan (M.), “Role of international NGO’s in IP policy-making and norm-setting act of multilateral institution”, in http://www.wklawreview.com/wp-content/upload/vol82no3/Matthew.pdf; http://www.kokopelli.asso.fr).
The ICC Roadmap also underlines those issues. Firstly, about the Environmental issue, CBD, the Convention on Bio Diversity, tries to conserve and protect this Biodiversity but few of its member states have so far passed laws on access and benefit sharing. Moreover, patent on genetic resources are viewed as inducing biopiracy. So, IP Rights can not be compatible with the protection of environment. Secondly, TRIPS agreement must be amened because it is sometimes in conflict with the CBD. There are discussions but little progress, there are also some pressure to provide more informations in Patent about genetic ressources and they try to implement a system of “certificates” to prove that biological material had been obtained legally. WIPO is ongoing a work on harmonization of patent law since 1984 and it continues to strongly support efforts to make significant progress on that work and to conclude it.
The ICC Roadmap also underlines the issues of climate changes and Plant Variety Rights. There is a need for major changes in business operation.
Show lessThanks for your effort in finding those interesting sources. I noticed you worked with G. Uwera on this post. All the best of the exams!