WIPO Opens 33rd General Assembly

The World Intellectual Property Organization's 183 member states are meeting in the WIPO Assemblies from September 25 to October 3, 2006, to review progress in the Organization's work and to discuss future policy directions. "If I had to sum up in one word, just one word, what I have been working to achieve since the beginning, and will continue to pursue as an objective in this Organization, that word would be ‘inclusion,’" said WIPO Director General Kamil Idris in his opening remarks. Topics on the agenda this year include

• negotiations on a "development agenda" for the organisation;
• a proposed treaty on broadcasters' rights;
• discussions on patent law harmonisation; and
• work on generic resources, traditional knowledge and folklore.

"Divisions among member states have left some of these processes at an absolute standstill," writes BRIDGES Weekly Trade News Digest on September 27, 2006.