Pop the champagne: today is World IP Day

In case you wonder why the masses are dancing in the street: today is World Intellectual Property day! This being the age of social media, there is of course also a World IP day Facebook page.

The moto of this year's celebrations is "designing the future", hoping to raise awareness that besides patents, trademark and copyright, there is that other intellectual property right, the registered design. The UK IPO celebrates the day with a special website.

The Nigerian IPO, on the other hand, submitted a poster to WIPO (depicted), but still does not have a website. Other examples of publicity material from various countries can be found on WIPO's website and provide an interesting glimpse into different cultures. Contrast Kenya's entry from 2002 with Korea 2006, and you get an impression of what I mean. Kenya's Intellectual Property Office, btw, officially has a website, but it seems unavailable. No points for guessing that the website of South Korea's IPO is not only up and running, but looking very professional and automatically redirecting users with English set as default browser language to the English language version of the page.

WIPO v WIPD: some good news at last

The auditors did warn WIPO that its building budget
was going to be at the expense of its ageing rapid
response Central Europe dot.biz tank squad

Some dedicated readers -- almost all, judging by tytoc collie's mailbox -- have been following the saga of WIPO v WIPD (see earlier posts here, here and here) and who have been wondering what, if anything, the World Intellectual Property Organization has been doing to snuff out the imitation website of the World Intellectual Property Database.  For these dedicated souls, the Kat can report that some positive tidings have drifted over the tops of breeze-ruffled palms of Lac Léman, framed by the splendour of the snow-garnished Alps.   At last the truth is out: WIPO is not sleeping on the job.  tytoc collie has been in communion with a very helpful WIPO spokesperson who had contacted him in order to set the record straight. From this unrivalled source the Kat has gleaned the following information:

• “Wipd.biz” is not just a tiny two-bit fly-by-night internet nasty but a highly organized and persistent fraud operation, against which the WIPO Secretariat has been engaging its efforts as soon as the problem came to WIPO's attention in the autumn of 2010;
• Initial actions included sending cease and desist letters -- but, as we now know, WIPD neither ceased nor desisted;
• WIPO has also alerted the users of its international filing and registration services, who are the intended targets of the fraud (the organization routinely warns users of its international filing and registration services against scams and frauds and, as the Kat has previously noted, it does keep and update information about fee-request scams on its website.  It also warns folk about recruitment scams -- something the Kat didn't know about;

WIPO's Swiss Guards train for the invasion of Czech cyberspace

• Simultaneously with these other measures, the WIPO Secretariat has initiated consultations with the national authorities of the Czech Republic, where the site is hosted.  The Kat guesses that the Czechs, being good, sweet folk who like a decent beer as much as he does, must be quite uncomfortable about all this, since they also host EURid's dispute resolution body -- which can deal with .eu problems but not .biz

• WIPO is cuurrently "pursuing further legal options" to end the fraud;
• The WIPO spokesperson emphasised that the organisation was very concerned to reassure stakeholders and the whole IP community that WIPO takes this – and any other identity theft or action that deceives or misleads its stakeholders – extremely seriously, and that it was and continues to remain highly active in dealing with this crafty and sophisticated foe;
• The WIPO Secretariat is ready to use the full extent of any legal system to protect its stakeholders and its reputation. The previous comparable case was in 2009, when WIPO cooperated with the Florida authorities in a successful legal action against a Florida-based company which was sending out by mass mail misleading “invoices” to patent and trade mark applicants—including users of WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty. The company was found to have violated the state's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

Speaking strictly off the record, the spokesperson expressed regret that WIPO had been slow to comment on tytoc collie's posts on this matter, but "this should by no means be misinterpreted as a lack of concern or inaction".  Sources close to the top have let it slip that there is a delicate protocol issue to overcome. WIPO has a big book that tells its top brass how to address diplomats, ambassadors and members of the Royal Family, but there is no formal precedent that deals with the right way to address an email to a fictional cat.  Now that this issue has been cunningly side-stepped by use of the telephone, diplomatic relations have been informally established and the security guards have been instructed to leave a bowl of milk at the front door in case the Kat should spring a surprise visit to Geneva ...

Merpel adds, let's all get behind WIPO and cheer them on in this battle.  It's not often that I cheer the big guy on in a tussle against a smaller foe, but I'm making an exception this time.

Will WIPO wither and die on the choking vine of ... development?

A new lobbying tactic from the
pro-patent group in WIPO?

One of the keenest observers of the international IP scene is Intellectual Property Watch's William New.  In "US Ambassador: Over-Focus On Development “Will Kill” WIPO", which he posted here last Friday, William gave an account of the strikingly outspoken statement by United States Ambassador to the United Nations Betty King [full text here] that the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) "is headed in a controversial direction", warning that "a focus on development at the expense of protection of intellectual property rights will mean the end of the agency".  She is quoted as saying

"If we get to a system where the protections of patents are abrogated in the name of development, then we certainly will kill that organization. So I worry very much about that”.

The remark, the author gently suggest is possibly a reflection that the 2007 WIPO Development Agenda intended to ensure WIPO is development-friendly, is having the more profound effect on the United Nations body’s activities sought by the Agenda’s proponents. King is said to have taken aim particularly at the recently formed Development Agenda Group, which includes the fast-growing [and IP-agnostic, queries Merpel?] economies of  Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia and South Africa.

Says the Kat, don't worry Betty, no-one has to sign up to anything they don't want to, and patent protection will only be abrogated if you want it to be. All WIPO treaties remain consensual.  When developing nations try to get the upper hand, for example in the Washington Treaty on Intellectual Property in Respect of Integrated Circuits when the developing nations rather liked the idea of compulsory licensing of chip topographies, the result is that nothing happens.  The same was the case with the attempts to put forward the UNCTAD Code on the Transfer of Technology in the 1980s, in which a large body of developing countries wanted advantageous terms such as the unbundling of licensed technology and warranties that it actually worked.  And when IP-rich countries don't feel that the existing international order is capable of supporting their requirements, they are perfectly capable of going off and doing an ACTA.   More to the point, if patent-rich countries can't come to the table and argue persuasively that their view is preferable to the more unpalatable bits of the development agenda, they have only themselves to blame.

Betty King International Diplomat here
Betty King International Ministries here
The goose that laid the golden eggs here