Australian Francis Gurry became the next [director general] of the World Intellectual Property Organization Monday, and promptly signalled a programme of increased multilateralism and bolstered global and local relevance for the United Nations body. ...
Gurry, who will take office on 1 October until 2014, laid out the makings of a diverse programme with several new initiatives ... He plans to announce his detailed strategy on 20 October, consulting with members until a meeting of the WIPO Programme and Budget Committee approves a new budget in December.
Gurry said urgent attention is needed for ... using intellectual property to reduce the global “knowledge gap” and build capacity in least-developed countries [among other goals] ...
Gurry devoted significant attention to the idea of using intellectual property to reduce the gap in knowledge and increase participation in the benefits of innovation and the knowledge economy.
To this end, he called for translating “political consensus into concrete and effective projects.” WIPO can construct a “global knowledge infrastructure, comprising public, freely available databases of technological and scientific information and operating on common standards for data interchange,” he said. ...
... Gurry calls upon countries to develop “National Intellectual Property and Innovation Strategies”. His own country, Australia, recently released a report on its innovation system which called for OA to public sector information and to publicly-funded research. ...
Not all of Gurry’s comments are so favorable. ... That Gurry gives such credence to content industry concerns suggests a certain bias in favor of protectionism and against openness ...
More broadly, Gurry’s comments focus largely on economic rather than scientific concerns, although both are subject to the same IP system over which he now presides. ... Based on the priorities evinced in his acceptance speech, the interests of scientists and students will be of less concern to Gurry than those of Miramax and Metallica.
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 9/23/2008 04:23:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
