New Group of developing countries in the WIPO

GENEVA, April 18 (KUNA) -- Up to 20 developing country members of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) launched on Sunday a new developing countries alliance under the name "Group of Development Agenda" to address issues of intellectual property rights.
The group aims to gain facilities needed to implement public policies such as health, access to medicine, the right to access knowledge flexibility associated with the transfer of technology from developed countries to developing countries and least developed countries.
The group includes Egypt, Algeria, Yemen, Brazil, India, Cuba, South Africa and Indonesia. Egypt has been elected to chair the group and to coordinate its work during the early stages. Ambassador Hisham Badr, Permanent Representative of Egypt to the United Nations in Geneva, said to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) creation of the group followed adoption of the WIPO of recommendations of the development agenda through the General Assembly in September 2007.
Badr saw the protection of intellectual property rights as the cornerstone of the new world economic order based on knowledge - or the so-called knowledge economy - where Western countries and multinational giants companies can ensure the protection of their developed innovative technology for production proposes.
"This matter is legitim but it should not lead to the creation of a monopoly of the knowledge ..," he added.
Badr said "the protection of innovation development is to ensure the public interest, such as the importance of protecting of scientific and technical creativity, but at the same time the need for harmonization between achieving the objective of protection and the achievement of public interest in creating a system of education includes a minimum amount of access to scientific books and databases of scientific journals". Thus, according to the Egyptian vision, the basis of achieving this balance is what could be described as "developmental perspective to protect intellectual property rights, which developing countries are trying to achieve through efforts in relevant international organizations of intellectual property." Egypt had been adopted last September as an international reception of patent applications at the global level in both Arabic and English, and was the only developing country with India and Brazil, which gets this place in the area of intellectual property.
WIPO, one of the 16 specialized agencies of the United Nations, was created in 1967 to encourage creative activity to promote the protection of intellectual property throughout the world. It currently has 184 member states, administers 24 international treaties and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. (end) ta.rk KUNA 181505 Apr 10NNNN