South Centre And Ciel Ip Quarterly Update: Third Quarter 2004
by SOUTH CENTRE & CIEL
ABOUT THE IP QUARTERLY UPDATE
1. Developing countries face complex challenges in the evolving scenario of international intellectual property policy-making. Multiple fronts of discussions and negotiations require a coordination of strategies and positions that is not always easy to achieve. Nonetheless, since the shift in fora has been carefully designed by developed countries to take advantage of these difficulties and thus attempt to circumvent the options, flexibilities, and unresolved issues present at the multilateral level, it is crucial to develop a global view of international intellectual property standard-setting and to take the larger context into consideration during any negotiation or discussion.
2. The South Centre and CIEL IP Quarterly Update is intended to facilitate a broader perspective of international intellectual property negotiations by providing a summary of relevant developments in multilateral, plurilateral, and bilateral fora. Moreover, each IP Quarterly Update focuses on a significant topic in the intellectual property and development discussions to demonstrate the importance of following developments in different fora and the risks of lack of coordination between the various negotiations. In the present Update we discuss, in Section II, the Multilateral System of Access and Benefit-Sharing under the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) and highlight the issues relevant to the intellectual property and development debate. Then, Section III will provide a brief factual update of intellectual property-