WIPO Announces Plans to Support Public Domain, Open Source

This is really big. This is the first time EVER that the World Intellectual Property Organization has recognized that the public domain has a place in intellectual property law. As a matter of fact, WIPO has spent a considerable amount of energy (and $$$) to make sure that this issue wouldn’t even come to the table. Score one for the public domain!

Check out the Geneva Declaration on the Future of the World Intellectual Property Organization

Said Cory Doctorow, EFF’s European Affairs Coordinator, “The growing presence of non-governmental pressure organizations like CPTech and EFF at WIPO’s meetings has begun to take its toll. The ridiculous IP-at-any-cost position of WIPO has been laid bare and revealed for a sham. Now the organization is taking its first baby-steps towards balance. In the coming months and years, the nonprofit presence at WIPO will broaden and deepen — we won’t let them fool us any longer.”

[Thanks Electronic Frontier Foundation!]

Related posts:

1. More about WIPO and Open Source
2. Open Source Controversy at WIPO
3. ARL principles on WIPO
4. Executive Directors of 5 library associations write US PTO about Open Source
5. The Forum on Privatization and the Public Domain