Development Agenda
News of the week in WIPO has been the meetings to discuss the WIPO Development Agenda. The Development Agenda (pdf) proposed by Argentina and Brazil, seeks to introduce a 'development dimension' into WIPO's work, and proposes some restructuring of WIPO to that end.
CPTech have a valuable page of documents on the Development Agenda here. Reports on these meetings have been collected also by Copyfight here.
Francis Gurry, Deputy Director-General of WIPO, has been here in Melbourne this week, and on Monday gave a talk for IPRIA hosted by Davies Collison Cave. At that Seminar, on 'The Future of The Patent System', he characterised the distinction within the Development Agenda talks as lying between those who want to 'legislate change' (Friends of Development), and those who want to make practical changes (US and friends). I think there is probably more to it than that, as I don't think the Friends of Development just want a bit of legislation...