infoJustice

The Chairs of the User Rights Track of the 2015 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest adopted the following final plenary statement:

Through the past four Global Congresses we have re-energized a movement, created and shared evidence, and set common agendas for the infusion of public interest objectives into intellectual property policy making. We recommend that the Steering Committee for the Congress strongly consider seeking to host the next Global Congress in Geneva, Switzerland. We so recommend in order to:

• Intersect with policy makers with concrete recommendations of policy proposals, which we should be working over the next two years to formulate and justify;
• Re-energize and support open and multilateral processes as an alternative to closed and secretive forums in which IP policy is too frequently made;
• Promote cross-region and cross-“track” mobilizations of experts, advocates and policy officials to construct together a positive agenda for the field;
• Use the forum to announce accomplishments and campaigns, including:
  • Completion of a World Trade Organization Declaration on Balanced Interpretation of the 3-step Test;
  • Consolidation of the limitations and exceptions agenda in WIPO toward one or more instruments promoting user rights to serve the needs of libraries, museums, archives and other institutions of memory, as well as for the purposes of education and other purposes;
  • Initiation of a process to create a Development Agenda 2.0, including promotion of user rights in copyright, patents and other fields as central to developmental outcomes, including especially in the digital environment;
  • The creation, or the initiation of a process to create, institutions that can promote the protection of human rights and other public interests within the creation of trade and other international agreements.

The statement was delivered to the Congress by Sean Flynn, Associate Director, Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, American University Washington College of Law, on behalf of the Chairs of the User Rights Track.