CIPR final report: integrating intellectual property rights and development policy

This, the final report of the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights set up by the UK government in 2001 and consisting of members representing a range of views on all aspects of IPRs.The Commission was asked to consider:how national IPR regimes could best be designed to benefit developing countries within the context of international agreements, including TRIPS;how the international framework of rules and agreements might be improved and developed – for instance in the area of traditional knowledge – and the relationship between IPR rules and regimes covering access to genetic resources;the broader policy framework needed to complement intellectual property regimes including for instance controlling anti-competitive practices through competition policy and law.The paper looks in general terms at the relationships between IPRs and development but also considers a number of key issues in more detail namelyhealth, plant variety protection (PVP), traditional knowledge, copyright and ICTspatent reforminstitutional capacityThe Commission's key finding are that:The intellectual property rights system, as a whole is less advantageous for developing than for developed countries in many areas of importance to development, such as health, agriculture, education and information technologies. The system increases the costs of access to many products and technologies that developing countries thus making poverty reduction more difficult.The extension of IP rights globally [under TRIPS] will diminish the degree of competition worldwide for many products and services leading to increased prices.On access to medicines the report finds that whilst without the incentive of patents it is doubtful the private sector would have invested so much in R&D, the IP system "hardly plays any role in stimulating research on diseases particularly prevalent in developing countries" unless there is also a substantial market in the developed world. To counteract increases in prices predicted as a result of extended IPRs the report explores a collection of measures including compulsory licensing, differential pricing and laws to facilitate the quick entry into markets of generic competitors once patents have expired.On PVP and traditional knowledge the Commission: receommends against developing countires providing patent protection for plants due to the restrictions this may place on farmers.calls for patents to include a requirement to disclose the geographic source of genetic material.calls for a broader definition of prior art (knowledge existing in the public domain) and the cataloguing of traditional knowledge with consent from the holders of that knowledge.On TRIPS the report calls for the extensions of dealines for implementation of TRIPS to 2016 for least developed countries and recommends developing countries take advantage of existing flexibilities.Finally the report calls on developed nations, WIPO and the WTO to take the economic needs of developing countries fully into account when seeking to craft international intellectual property rights systems.