Apr 23, 1998

DEVELOPMENT: A 'NOT-SO-PUBLIC' INTERNET DEBATE ON IPRS

Geneva, 22 Apr (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- An invitation, on behalf of the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, to active non-governmental environment and development groups to join an "electronic discussion" on Intellectual Property Rights and Economic Development, is now proving controversial, with some assailing the move as a "scam".

In particular, the critics charge that some common etiquettes of such internet debates, to ensure openness and fair-play to various views, are being disregarded, in an effort to promote an industry view. 

The internet was founded, and has long functioned, as an open and democratic forum and, even after its current explosion of users and the needs for moderating regulations, some common etiquettes are followed.  

These include that everyone's views would be posted, and available to other participants, and that there would be no "filtering" of views, with moderators deciding what the others should read.  

This is an important difference from other discussion fora, symposia and seminar where the organizers retain the right to invite or exclude participants, and in publishing proceedings.  

The Uruguay Round discussions, and the negotiations leading to an agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights, was mainly non-transparent private exercise among a few key trade diplomats and industry patent law experts, with the public generally unaware of what was being done behind their backs.  

But since the WTO came into being the implications of the TRIPS have sunk in and a large coalition of southern and northern NGOs have joined hands to oppose the WTO and its processes, and in assailing the global monopolies for corporations and their appropriation of public knowledge and commons for private profit.

The NGO groups have been coalescing to demand changes in TRIPs, and particularly deny patents on 'life' and genes and socalled 'genetically manipulated' organisms, and the 'piracy' of indigenous knowledge, bio-diversity of countries and their patenting.  

The original claims of the WTO, and the World Bank that TRIPS enable technology transfers and promote investments, and thus benefit the public consumer, have been challenged in some of the academic writings and by non-governmental analysts - and the two organizations have been hard put to rebut the growing weight of opinion that these unregulated global regimes only promote interest of the mega-TNCs and their profits at the expense of the public and consumers in poor countries.  

The World Bank's chief economist, Mr. Joseph Stiglitz (in his Wider lecture in January of this year) has flagged this issue of IPRs and technology transfer and public interest as areas to be explored for a post-Washington consensus, and one not based on policies laid out from Washington, but receiving ownership of developing countries themselves.  

The World Bank/WTO "internet discussion" has come at this stage.  

The "public invitation" to join the internet discussion, from April 27 to 15 May, went out on behalf of the TechNet Program" of the World Bank and "the joint website team" of the World Bank's Economic Development Institute (EDI) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).  

The invitees were asked "to subscribe" (a technical term used on internet to access an inter-net conference or discussion) to the "TechNet-EDI-WTO Think Tank" electronic discussion on "Intellectual Property Rights and Economic Development." 

The Think Tank, the "invitation" said is an Internet-moderated conference discussion to be conducted entire through electronic mail.

It would "discuss" the role of IPR protection in economic development and, specifically, "explore" to what degree IPRs, if at all, are relevant to the low income countries, compare relevance of IPRs across different sectors, and review recent trends from developed and developing countries in this regard.

The discussion, the invitation further said, would then focus on the impact of IPRs on international trade and investment flows and their interaction and how different IPRs instruments influence the diffusion of knowledge within and across countries.

Finally, the invitation said, the Think Tank would address the issue of IPRs reform, particularly how to design an "optimal" IPRs regime given developing countries' commitments under the WTO Agreement on TRIPS.

Experts from government, private sector, academia, NGOs and international organizations, including the World Bank and the WTO, have been invited to discuss the topic, that the discussion would be broadcast only to subscribers of the conference, "but readers are encouraged to comment and pose questions."

The invitation then gave the procedure to participate in the conference discussions.

But when Beth Burrows from the Edmonds Institute (of the United States), an active environment/development NGO, which has been challenging some of the "bio-piracies" by TNCs, followed up on the invitation and sought to join she was told that only the panellists words would be unedited, but that the comments of the general public would go through "a filtering process".

Those who wanted to join and participate were told that one Mr. Carsten Fink of the TechNet would act as the "Think Tank Moderator", and would facilitate, summarise and draw conclusions from the discussions.

The Think Tank, they were advised, was to be a "broadcast only" conference, and hence "comments from the general public cannot be submitted directly to the discussion, but are referred to the conference manager" and that this would "ensure that all comments are relevant, concise and properly addressed".

The panellists, except for one or two, have been drawn from former negotiators, WTO, World Bank and WIPO officials (all known to be protagonists of the TRIPS regime and of TNCs), and several of the US and European academics and patent experts having the same orientation.

The only internationally prominent expert, and identifiable as a critic, among the invited panellists appears to be Dr. Carlos Correa, Argentine lawyer, economist and former Argentine negotiator, who is now directing a Masters Programme on Science and Technology and a post-graduate course on IPRs at the University of Buenos Aires.

In a communication to other NGOs, drawing attention to this "public discussion", Beth Burrows noted that only Correa was identifiable as one having an alternative view of the GATT-TRIPs.  

This TechNet conference, Burrows said, "will later be billed as having been open to the public, widely advertised and democratically carried out."

"Someone needs to let folks know this is not quite the case," and this World Bank-WTO "scam" should be condemned at the outset, Burrows said, "before it does damage or further warps the minds of the already disadvantaged NGO community."

This think-tank, she added, is to take place during the period of the Fourth Conference of Parties (COP4) of the UN Biodiversity Convention, "when many of the people likely to substantially object to IPR visions of the WTO and the World Bank" will be busy at Bratislava discussing the recognition of indigenous people's IPRs. 

"Is it possible," Burrows has said, "that the World Bank and the WTO are 'genetically unable' to be fair? Sorry, I should have said 'structurally unable'... with all the world push to recognize the rights of organizations and corporations as if they were people, I almost forgot WTO and the World Bank are not people per se but bad ideas made incarnate."