The Project on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and Knowledge Governance aims to assist disadvantaged countries to shape IPR regimes to their needs and interests, with an emphasis on copyright issues as they relate to access to information and knowledge and free expression. It also supports experimentation with new models for the production, financing, and dissemination of information-based goods.

Background

Intellectual Property (IP) Rights and Knowledge Governance are an open society issue because they are a fundamental means to govern ownership of information and knowledge. International agreements and national laws governing copyright and patents set the ground rules for access to knowledge and to other information-based goods such as software, technology, and pharmaceuticals. Those agreements and laws determine the sustainability and scope of activities of publishers and libraries, education and research institutions, as well as the media. Moreover, the laws and technologies used to control intellectual property can also be used to control speech, so that copyright law, in combination with digital rights management technologies, shapes the ability to communicate freely.

New international arrangements like the TRIPS agreement under the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) "Internet Treaties,"—as well as a wave of new IP-related legislation at national and regional levels—have created a restrictive global IPR regime that is grossly unfavorable to and inappropriate for transition and developing countries. At the same time, the United States (and to a lesser extent the European Union) have used bilateral trade negotiations and threats of trade sanctions to impose even more restrictive rules on individual developing countries.

Objectives

Over the next few years, there are opportunities for disadvantaged countries to both exploit flexible provisions in existing agreements and to have a greater influence on shaping emerging frameworks and instruments. The IPR and Knowledge Governance Program will support projects aimed at:

• ensuring that implementation of the TRIPS agreement takes into account the needs of poor countries, and helping to prepare developing countries for the upcoming review of the TRIPS agreement; in the longer term, supporting efforts aimed at a thoroughgoing reform of TRIPS;
• reorienting WIPO to serve the needs and interests of poorer countries;
• challenging intellectual property-related unilateralism by the United States and European Union (EU);
• confronting excessively restrictive national or regional instruments that are often uncritically copied in countries outside the EU and the United States, where protections of access and fair use rights are weak.

A number of existing initiatives focus on patent issues, but few are engaged with equally important copyright problems at the international level. Interventions supported by the IPR and Knowledge Governance Program focus on the protection of fair use and fair dealing rights (involving, among other stakeholders, library associations) as well as the protection of indigenous knowledge (focusing on African countries).

Besides confronting inequitable rules, the IPR and Knowledge Governance Program may provide seed funding to pilot new models for the production, dissemination and use of information-based goods and expanding the information commons. These may include alternative licensing schemes, new models for compensating producers, and open intellectual property conservancies.