The International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and UNCTAD have launched a process of regular meetings at the senior level to strengthen collaboration between the two agencies on a range of different areas of work.
The first such meeting took place on 17 October 2012 at WIPO Headquarters. The meeting represents an important milestone in following up on Recommendation 40 of WIPO's Development Agenda, which requests WIPO to intensify its cooperation on intellectual property-related issues specifically with UNCTAD and other intergovernmental organizations, and paragraph 18 of the Doha Mandate, which requests UNCTAD to enhance synergies and promote complementarities with other international organizations.
The meeting was chaired jointly by the Deputy Director-General of WIPO, Johannes Christian Wichard, and the Deputy Secretary-General of UNCTAD, Petko Draganov, and brought together substantive staff from different divisions of both organizations in order to explore areas for closer collaboration. The issues of common interest addressed at the meeting included work on entrepreneurship and technology transfer, the LDC Priority Needs Assessments for submission to the WTO TRIPS Council, the development potential of the creative industries, the interface between intellectual property policy and competition policy, and the work of the Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD).
The discussions will be followed up on at the working level, and the progress will be reviewed at the next cooperation meeting, which is scheduled for the first half of 2013.
