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The WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC) failed yet again to agree on the way forward in October.
While a number of countries saw the establishment of the IGC nearly eight years ago as a developed country ploy to deflect growing pressure at the WTO to address concerns about the misappropriation of genetic resources and traditional knowledge, others pinned their hopes on this alternative forum for breaking a long-standing deadlock. Whatever their objectives, most delegates to the committee’s 13th session left the meeting with an acute sense of frustration.
All parties to the October meeting professed their commitment to protecting traditional knowledge and folklore/traditional cultural expressions, as well as addressing the misappropriation of genetic resources, but familiar faultlines quickly emerged: most developing countries favoured international legally binding measures, while developed countries emphasised the need for further analysis and expressed a preference for non-binding measures, particularly at the national level.
Members of the African Group were particularly disheartened by the outcome in view of the efforts and substantive proposals they had made.
Despite the setback, IGC chair Rigoberto Gauto Vielman expressed confidence that differences on how to advance the committee’s work would be overcome. He promised to undertake informal consultations in the coming weeks with WIPO member states and observers, including representatives of indigenous and local communities in the process.
Much of the IGC’s latest session focused on procedural issues for its next meeting in March 2009. The committee’s current mandate runs out in September 2009, when the WIPO general assembly will decide whether it should be extended.
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