After Folklore, Traditional Knowledge Makes Steps Toward WIPO Treaty Text

After a week of technical discussions to elaborate a draft text designed to help the World Intellectual Property Organization member states reach a treaty text on the protection of traditional knowledge, experts provided a set of draft articles, comments and proposed amendments.

According to the draft summary report [pdf] of the expert working group, WIPO secretariat will prepare a document for the next session of the organization’s Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC), taking place in May. The secretariat will incorporate the draft articles, the comments make by experts in plenary, with attribution and also comments made by experts representing observers.

The three tracks of the IGC have been divided into expert working groups meeting between the biannual IGC meetings and called intersessional working groups to facilitate progress on negotiations. Those working groups are composed of experts coming mostly from diplomatic missions, ministers, and from national intellectual property offices, along with representatives of indigenous peoples, civil society, industry, international intergovernmental organisations.

The purpose of those meetings is to have technical discussions which keep the political dimension at large and trying to present the next IGC with language that could become the text of a negotiating treaty.

The First Intersessional Working Group met in July and dealt with traditional cultural expressions. It produced a text ready to be presented to the IGC. In the footsteps of the first group, the Second Intersessional Working Group meeting this week aimed at producing a text from which the IGC could work.

That goal seems to have been achieved and working group Chair Ian Heath of Australia told Intellectual Property Watch today that the discussions had been mostly on substance and had steered away from political interventions.

Six open-ended drafting groups were sent to find common languages on Wednesday and yesterday a set of draft articles were produced and were discussed until the end of the session today (IPW, WIPO, 23 February 2011).

No changes have been made in the text, but all comments have been recorded and will be taken forward to the IGC, Heath said. There is no disagreement on intent, he told Intellectual Property Watch, but some divergence on how to reconcile sometimes very different points of view on the protection of traditional knowledge.

A set of different options sprinkle the draft articles, showing the inability of the drafting groups to reach common language on most of the articles (IPW, WIPO, 25 February 2011).

The draft summary report of the Second Intersessional Working Group was presented to the experts this afternoon and adopted with only a minor edit in the language of points 6 and 7 of Agenda Item 4 to include a mention of specific text proposals suggested by experts, in the description of the comments given to the draft articles, Heath said.

The new version of the draft summary report including this version was not available at press time.

Genetic Resources Next

Next week, the Third Intersessional Working Group will meet to discuss genetic resources. Unlike the two first working groups, this one will not have a single document to work from but a set of documents including country submissions and comments, putting an extra challenge to the group.