Declaration on the Future of WIPO

OSI’s Information Program, together with the Consumer Project on Technology (CPTech), convened a group of experts to draft a "declaration" calling upon the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to adopt a fairer approach to intellectual property (IP) policy-making.

The "Geneva Declaration on the Future of WIPO" arose from a workshop on the future of WIPO that was hosted by the the TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue on September 13 and 14, 2004, in Geneva, Switzerland. The drafters of the declaration—including academics and NGO representatives—are urging WIPO, the United Nations agency that oversees intellectual property, to seriously reconsider its agenda. The declaration calls for WIPO to abandon its current culture of expanding monopoly privileges without regard to social cost and to instead strike a balance between the public domain and competition on the one hand, and the realm of property rights on the other. The declaration also expresses strong support for the recent "Proposal by Argentina and Brazil for the Establishment of a Development Agenda for WIPO."

To learn more about the declaration, including information about supporting it, visit the Geneva Declaration on the Future of WIPO page on the CPTech website.

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