The World Intellectual Property Organization has issued a press release hailing the completion of a Creative Commons licence for intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) to offer their published material for others to share with minimal restrictions. WIPO was joined by a wide range of other IGOs such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), numerous United Nations agencies like the World Health Organization, and Creative Commons founder Prof. Larry Lessig.

The WIPO press release is available here.

More information from Creative Commons is available here.

According to WIPO, the Creative Commons 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisation (IGO) License comes after a two-year collaboration led by WIPO with the support of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in collaboration with several other international organisations.

“The licenses make it easier for IGOs to widely distribute their studies, reports, data sets and other material online,” WIPO said. “Once applied, the licenses give the public permission to republish that content, as long as they follow a few simple rules. Creative Commons licenses are widely used and understood around the world.”

“The new tool will make access to and use of important stores of information much easier,” WIPO Director General Francis Gurry said in the release.

“Governments and international organizations have to lead by example when it comes to disseminating information in the digital age,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría.

Harvard law professor Lessig said in the release: “The more that everyone can access and use the important work of IGOs, the more impactful they are. By publishing their information and data under Creative Commons licenses, these organizations are giving anyone on the planet the right to read and share those materials.”

Lessig visited WIPO in 2010 (IPW, WIPO, 5 November 2010, w video), and CERN in 2011 (IPW, European Policy, 19 April 2011).

The Creative Commons IGO licence “will simplify the procedures for re-publishing by setting a single license requirement for a report or dataset once and for all, which remains valid for whoever re-uses the content,” the WIPO release said.

The group of organizations that contributed to the development of the new licenses consisted of, in addition to WIPO: the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN); European Space Agency (ESA); Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO); Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); International Labour Organization (ILO); Organization of American States (OAS); Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); United Nations (UN); United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); World Bank; World Health Organization (WHO). The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the Nordic Council of Ministers participated as observers to the group.

Related Links provided by WIPO:

• Creative Commons / Attribution 3.0 IGO
• Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO
• Creative Commons / Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 IGO
• Creative Commons / Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 IGO
• Creative Commons / Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO
• Creative Commons / Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 IGO