The Position of Brazil - Global Issue Paper No. 27
By Cícero Gontijo, December 2005
(Translated by Andrea Carina Cesch)
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Preface
The WTO has set itself the task of comprehensively restructuring the international trading system. That this aim is not only about continuing liberalisation and deregulation can be seen most clearly in the negotiations over intellectual property rights, where there is no sign of liberalisation. Cicero Contijo shows that negotiations are being carried out with the intention of "tightening up norms, imposing standards and strengthening monopolies". In examining this contradiction, the author of this study describes the historical development of international intellectual property rights from the Paris Convention of 1883 to the WTO's TRIPS Agreement. Whereas at the outset, the requirement of disclosure of the invention and the recognition of the principle of local production were considered founding principles, international patent law soon evolved increasingly and exclusively in the direction of property protection rights. This concept of intellectual property primarily secures the utilisation rights of the copyright holders and does not concern itself with other aims such as development or health. The debate over the fight against HIV/AIDS has thrust this questionable aspect of the international copyright system into the consciousness of a much wider public.
Contijo's report focuses on Brazil's attempts to move the international system of intellectual property rights and copyright towards a more development-oriented stance. In doing so, he shows that the current regulations were not and are not the only option. In their interesting proposal to WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization), Brazil and Argentina have introduced a more development-orientated regulatory system for intellectual property which outlines a possible political alternative to the existing situation. This makes the position of Brazil and Argentina extremely interesting and controversial in the discussion of patent regulation within the WTO. It also remains to be seen whether the Doha round will live up to its claim of being a development round in regard to this strand of the negotiations. The author sees little sign of that happening, and sees furthermore the necessity of placing the apparently intractable question of intellectual property rights at the centre of a broader debate.
Thomas Fatheuer
hbs rio de janeiro