Today Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia will present a proposal for an amendment
to the statutes of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which is
housed in the UN.
The amendment calls for a country’s stage of development to be taken into consideration so as not to permit property protection to impede access to culture and technology.
“The amendment has received support from developing nations,” reports Roberto Jaguaribe, the president of the Brazilian Institute of Intellectual Property (INPI), who is attending the session of the WIPO.
Although developed nations have not come out openly against the proposal, Jaguaribe says its sponsors are ready to defend the idea in discussions which will take place today.
In April, the Interministerial Committee to Combat Piracy and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) held a meeting in Brasília with organizations from the Mercosur member-countries (Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Brazil, together with associate members, Chile and Bolivia) to discuss copyrights and the war on piracy in Latin America.
The purpose of the meeting was to seek a common agreement for the region, based on a debate over proposals, as well as to promote training and technical cooperation.
“The main goal of this meeting is to work out an exchange of experiences with respect to the observance of intellectual property rights, more specifically in relation to combatting piracy in the Mercosur countries, Bolivia, and Chile,” said Isabella Pimentel, consultant at the WIPO office of Economic Development for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Subsequent to the meeting, the organizations were to submit the conclusions about combatting piracy to the appropriate organs in each country, to contribute to the formulation of both unilateral and multilateral policies.
Need of Update
Experts from various countries agreed, in a conference promoted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in March 2002, in Geneva, that the global patent system should be modernized and simplified.
The president of National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI), José Graça Aranha, revealed at the time that, although it was not explicited, the modernization and simplification depends on the implantation of a global patent system.
He added that, if this system is created, it should take in consideration not only the interests of the industrialized countries but also those of developing countries. According to Graça Aranha, Brazil will participate actively of the debates about the issue.
Agência Brasil
Translator: Allen Bennett