The government of Chile this week submitted a proposal to an upcoming meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s new committee on the development agenda that calls for positive steps to protect information in the public domain. The first meeting of the new Provisional Committee on Proposals Related to a WIPO Development Agenda will be held in Geneva on 20-24 February. The committee created by the WIPO General Assembly in October reflects a compromise extension of discussions over a proposal to expand WIPO’s focus on developing countries’ needs (IPW, 3 October 2005). The original development agenda proposal was put forward at the 2004 General Assembly by Argentina and Brazil, supported by 12 other Friends of Development. Subsequent proposals have followed. In its proposal, Chile highlights the benefits to society of a rich base of freely available public information. The public domain is of “crucial importance” to researchers, academics, educators, artists, authors and enterprises, as well as all varieties of institutions, it said. Developing countries in particular have raised concern that WIPO’s emphasis on the protection of rights, rather than the protection of public knowledge, may reduce their ability to innovate since most rights belong to developed countries. The proposal, obtained by Intellectual Property Watch, mentions a series of previous documents negotiated by governments in various bodies such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, and the UN World Summit on the Information Society. Chile calls for an analysis of the implications and benefits of a substantive and accessible public domain, and elaboration of proposals and models for the protection and identification of and access to the contents of the public domain. It further calls for protection of the public domain to be considered in the making of policy at WIPO.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/12/2006 08:25:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
