Oxford Task Force To Examine Global Knowledge Governance

Intellectual property rules are the predominant tool to manage knowledge ownership and diffusion, but the complexity of IP regimes at the bilateral, regional or multilateral levels as well as the strengthening of these rules is a source of tension between stakeholders, according to a newly launched task force at the Oxford University Global Economic Governance Programme.

The Expert Taskforce on Global Knowledge Governance comes in the face of challenges to knowledge governance such as the proliferation of global policy debates with an IP dimension, the imbalance between proprietary knowledge and the public domain, the need to stimulate innovation, and rising calls from stakeholders for greater accountability.

The task force will address questions of the emerging trends and challenges of knowledge generation, access and use, the importance and effectiveness of current arrangements for knowledge governance, and key principles that could guide a reform of the global knowledge governance. A report should be published in late 2010.

The task force, whose members are not yet public, has several honorary advisors. They are: Rubens Ricupero of Brazil, former secretary general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD); Sir John Sulston, a Nobel Laureate and chair of the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester (UK), and Jacques Attali, founder and special advisor to former French President François Mitterand and first president of London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.