Well, okay, I don't know about shocking, but Tom G. assures us that some of his posts are giving rise to "consternation" at the WIPO meeting on development issues in Geneva.

And there is more from Mark Schultz, too:

Experienced observers speculate that these countries have two motives that have little to do with the ideological tropes of Access to Knowledge and Access to Health frequently invoked in these proceedings. First, these countries have been greatly frustrated during the Doha Development Round of the WTO negotiations by the unwillingness of developed countries to make concessions regarding the massive subsidies that developed countries provide to their agricultural industries. Some believe that Brazil, Argentina, and India are willing to bring productive activity to a halt at WIPO in order to gain leverage in WTO negotiations. As the argument goes, the developed nations value what WIPO does, and by making WIPO less effective -as developing nations have done by blocking progress on patent harmonization -they may make developed nations more willing to cooperate at the WTO.

The second motive that some see in what Brazil and India do confirms the old aphorism that all politics are local. Brazil and India have large generic drug industries. By seeking exceptions to intellectual property protection, particularly with respect to health care, Brazil and India support their domestic drug industries. This kind of activity appears to represent a new kind of protectionism. After the WTO, nations find it difficult to promote industrial policy with trade barriers. They can, however, still engage in similar forms of industrial policy that protect particular domestic industries if they can limit intellectual property protection for foreign competition.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 3:42 PM | International

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