United States of america

Comments by the United States Regarding the WIPO Medium-Term Strategic Plan, 2010-2015

September 2010

 

General Comments:

 

WIPO’s Medium Term Strategic Plan for 2010-2015 illustrates a significant effort to build a responsive and efficient Organization to meet its mandate in providing global leadership on intellectual property issues.

      

The United States welcomes WIPO’s MTSP as a complimentary element to WIPO’s results-based management framework, which is designed to track performance and achieve results. The MTSP will contribute to WIPO's ability to demonstrate accountability and to produce results.

 

The MTSP is a strategic document concerning the direction of the Organization and elements on what WIPO can do. We recognize that it represents the personal vision of the Director General on the tasks WIPO could tackle for the next five years. The recently approved Strategic Realignment Process provides the details on how the Secretariat will perform and execute its work programs. These work programs have been based on decisions reached by Member States through the Program and Budget Committee. The MTSP provides welcome guidance on the factors WIPO should consider in fulfilling its mandate. 

 

The United States supports adoption of the MTSP, as presented in A/48/3. The Director General undertook an unprecedented consultative process on the MTSP for 2010-2015 prior to its submission to the General Assemblies. The MTSP presented in A/48/3 is a balanced document that already largely reflects the views of all Member States participating in the consultative process, and it has found overwhelming support for its implementation. The United States applauds WIPO for its extraordinary efforts at transparency and extensive consultations. Moreover, in light of a further round of consultation with the Chair of the Program and Budget Committee, the United States welcomes this additional opportunity to submit further comments to fully inform the WIPO General Assembly upon taking note of the Plan. In this regard, additional comments from the United States follow.

 

 

Specific Comments:

 

The detailed and helpful plan/strategies to address the core services of WIPO are all welcomed and strongly supported by the United States. We think it is worthwhile to highlight in particular Strategic Goals I, II, III, IV, and VII. The draft strategies to tackle the challenges and opportunities in these goals are of great importance to the U.S. 

The United States strongly supports the need to continually evolve the international intellectual property framework to keep pace with legal and technological developments. The U.S. urges the International Bureau to devote sufficient resources to the substantive divisions, particularly those dealing with Patents, Trademark and Copyright law, so that the International Bureau may conduct the necessary studies and continue its tradition of preparing excellent working documents. 

 

Provision of premier global IP services is critical to ensure rightholders’ have a cost-effective and efficient means to protect their intellectual property. Moreover, these services are central to the financial stability and growth of the Organization. We support WIPO’s aim to ensure adequate investment in the renewal and expansion of the use of the services and to increase the participation of developing, least developed, and transition economies in the services and the benefits they offer. In particular, to address the backlog challenges under the PCT system, more investment should be provided for information technology solutions, such as electronic file access and machine translation tools. In this regard, serious reform of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) is needed to address the administrative burdens many Patent Offices are facing, leading to significant backlogs in processing these applications. The United States strongly supports the PCT Working Group focusing on this problem through technical solutions as well as minimizing duplication of search and examination by national offices. Moreover, in an effort to ensure wider participation of the PCT system, more examination should be undertaken to address PCT fee structures. The United States continues to support the reduction in fees where possible, as a means to stimulate innovation and economic development. The harmonization of patent laws among Member States is highly desirable to address barriers to trade and to access information, particularly those relating to prior art issues.

 

On Coordination and Development of Global IP Infrastructure, the U.S. applauds the IB for seeking to further develop and improve WIPO’s IP infrastructure assets. IP infrastructure is critical to the good functioning of the IP system and can greatly facilitate use of the system by rightholders, IP offices and the public in all countries – developed, developing, least developed and economies in transition. In particular, the strategies to strengthen infrastructure at the national level, to create automated systems in countries and to develop global databases to improve access to information are critical components to achieve increased efficiency and productivity in IP systems.

 

In our view, related to the strategic goal of improving IP infrastructure is the growing need for WIPO to develop activities aimed at facilitating the use of IP for development. The United States strongly supports WIPO’s ongoing work in this area. In particular, the regional bureaus of the Technical Assistance and Capacity Building Sector work closely with the recently established Development Agenda Coordination Division (DACD) to respond to increased demand from Member States for optimization of the development component in WIPO's activities. Specifically, we believe WIPO should focus on working with countries to develop National IP Strategies to meet their national needs and to increase economic growth. National IP Strategy documents, formulated by governments with input from the private sector and universities/research institutions, will help guide governments in making their choices as to how to use IP to promote and strengthen scientific and technological research, development, and commerce. We also support more resources being devote to increase distance learning courses and targeted "training of trainer" programs to better optimize technical assistance resources.

 

Though not specifically highlighted in the MTSP, the U.S. believes WIPO needs to ensure and specifically note that there is greater efficiency being provided in the implementation of Development Agenda related projects and activities under the Committee of Development and IP (CDIP). WIPO’s recent efforts in addressing this issue are applauded with respect to the creation of a budgetary process for CDIP projects, recently agreed to at the 2010 Program and Budget Committee meetings, the results-based management framework initiative, the Coordination and Monitoring Mechanism under CDIP, and the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning System) which this past PBC decided should devote significant resources to improving WIPO’s management and administration performance. All of these initiatives will help to ensure that the Organization is properly tracking performance, resources and results related to Development Agenda activities. 

 

Lastly, on Addressing IP in Relation to Global Policy Issues, the U.S. strongly supports WIPO establishing itself as the primary point of reference on the interface between public policy issues and IP, because WIPO has distinctive IP expertise to lend to these critical IP policy debates. The strategies identified to meet that goal are welcomed by the U.S., and in particular we believe that the development of partnerships and collaborations in promoting innovation and diffusion of key technologies in using IP as a tool to address certain aspects of public welfare issues holds great promise. Partnerships among UN agencies, IGOs, governments, academia and industry are key in leveraging funding, technical resources and expertise of both the public and private sectors. The US Government strongly supports such endeavors to maximize the impact of these resources, and encourages enhanced development of such partnerships.

URUGUAY

 

COMMENTS BY THE DELEGATION OF URUGUAY ON THE MEDIUM TERM STRATEGIC PLAN (DOCUMENT A/48/3) TO BE ANNEXED TO THE REPORT OF THE WIPO ASSEMBLIES

 

The Delegation of Uruguay welcomes the opportunity to submit comments in writing on the Medium Term Strategic Plan (MTSP) for WIPO, for inclusion in the Annex to the report of the Assemblies on the corresponding agenda item.

 

We would like to express Uruguay’s support for the drafting of a Medium Term Strategic Plan to guide the Organization’s work in the next five years in order to promote innovation and creativity for the economic, social and cultural development of all countries through a balanced and effective international intellectual property system as defined in the mission statement of this Plan (Document A/48/3). With regard to “all countries”, we would like to point out that there are different levels of development, and in order for the intellectual property system to be effective it should adapt to these levels and allow for the leeway contained in the international treaties on the subject.

 

In addition and taking into consideration what the Director General, Mr. Francis Gurry, stated in the foreword, this Plan constitutes a joint initiative between the WIPO Secretariat and Member States, and is in line with the strategic approaches agreed on by these Member States. However, to adopt this Plan a consensus should have been reached, following a negotiation process, which ensured an adequate balance of interests of all countries. Given the way in which the Strategic Plan is presented, Uruguay is concerned by the fact that the development dimension is not clearly shown in some chapters of the Plan. Uruguay is concerned that in the legislative activity proposed the impact or scope of amendments to the existing IP system has not been considered first. And Uruguay is particularly concerned by the idea of WIPO as the leading organization in the debate regarding the interface between intellectual property and global public policy issues.

 

With regard to the latter point in particular, Uruguay believes that intellectual property is not the predominant issue in public health, food security and climate change, inter alia, which is why WIPO could not lead the interface on these subjects, but rather could provide technical and political input as an intergovernmental organization.

 

By way of example, at the moment Uruguay is facing an international lawsuit brought by the tobacco company Philip Morris (a company whose profits are double Uruguay’s GDP) against the public health policy on tobacco control in Uruguay, arguing that some of its makes are being expropriated, and ignoring the impact that the marketed products have on the health of the population and the reason for the national public health policies. Protecting health is one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and is especially enshrined as a principle in Article 8 of the WTO Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. If IP rights were considered to take precedence over the right to health, we would be allowing companies, whose products cause diseases and increase the mortality of the population, to operate unregulated.

 

Finally, we would like to mention the statement made by the Minister of Industry, Energy and Mining of Uruguay, Mr. Roberto Kreimerman, a chemical engineer, at the High Level Segment of the WIPO Assemblies on the support given to the MTSP which meets the needs of all WIPO Member States.

 

Lastly, we would like to express our support for the statement made by Egypt on behalf of the Development Agenda Group, and our commitment to continue working constructively with the Secretariat and other WIPO Member States in order to achieve a balanced IP system which respects the interests of all countries.

September 27, 2010

ZAMBIA