Why the Canadian Development Proposal Failed at WIPO

According to BRIDGES Weekly for April 20, 2005, Canada's draft proposal to fourth session of WIPO's Permanent Committee on Cooperation for Development Related to Intellectual Property (PCIPD) on April 14-15 April would have broadened the scope of the PCIPD's work to include several of the issues that had been raised during the "development agenda" debates earlier in the week. In particular, the committe would have been given the authority to examine the effects of intellectual property regimes on innovation and economic growth in developing countries.

However, developing country advocates opposed the Canadian approach, arguing that their concerns needed to be addressed in WIPO's core debates, not marginalised in a technical committee such as the PCIPD. They argued that the PCIPD should limit itself to operationalising concrete tasks such as technical cooperation. At the end of the meeting, the majority of WIPO members formally rejected the summary of the meeting's outcomes that the Chair had prepared in consultation with delegations. However, they did agree that the September meeting of the PCIPD would consider adopting the report of the meeting's proceedings -- a document seen by a number of members to be more representative of their concerns than the Chair's summary.