Protecting the world’s bright ideas

Press, 2 October 1979, Page 27

Protecting the world’s bright ideas

By

LIESL GRAZ

in Geneva

Even in Geneva, where acronyms crackle like potato crisps in diplomatic conversations, almost noone had heard of W.1.P.0. until it recently moved into a stunning new building of heavenly-blue glass just across the Place des Nations from the United Nations European headquarters.

W.1.P.0. stands for World Intellectual Property Organisation, and it has been around under various initials since 1883.

Its work is rather less spectacular than global smallpox eradication or saving the temples of Nubia. Mainly it consists of keeping the international conventions on copyrights and patents up to date. When W.1.P.0. joined the United Nations family in 1974, one condition was that it would, like the

other specialised agencies, devote a good part of its energy to the needs of developing countries. Before, according to one observer, it was “a sort of rich man’s club where industrialised countries could, in a gentlemanly way, see that each other’s inventors, writers and composers were protected.” A concrete example of the new spirit is the aid given to developing countries in writing their patent laws or bringing them up to date. (Few businessmen are willing to set up modern plants or develop modern service structures — in other words, transfer technology and not. goods —to a country where their patent rights are not protected). When copyright laws existed largely for books, it was fairly easy to keep some rein on the business and assure authors and publishers of their just rewards. But, as recording equipment has become cheaper and simpler, the problems in the field of music —popular music in particular — have grown enormous.

It is easy to slip even quite a good recorder into a concert, although in most countries it is illegal to do so without written consent of the performers. Rerecording is even simpler. If it is done for strictly private enjoyment there is usually no great harm done. When, however, it is turned into a commercial enterprise that is another matter.

The boom in pirate recordings, with, not far on the horizon, the prospect of videotape is one of W.1.P.0.’s big

headaches. If the diagnosis of the disease is fairly c 1 e a r-cut. proposing treatment is less so. W.1.P.0. as such has no enforcement powers; the international phonographic industry, which will probably soon begin a vigorous antipiracy campaign, has little more. W.1.P.0. can give advice, provide a neutral forum for discussion and perhaps, in some cases, exercise a modicum of moral pressure on governments in places where abuse is particularly flagrant. Quite recent among W.1.P.0.’s concerns is the protection (in the legal, not the ecological sense) of new plant varieties. Obvious examples are new roses or tulips but. in hard international economic fact, high-yield grain crops are much more important. Creating a high-yield strain of rice. for example, requires years of research, and developers will not undertake the work and the risks unless they have commercial protection. The newest objects of W.1.P.0. solicitude are invisible: micro-organisms, increasingly used in industrial and scientific applications, range from those voracious bacteria that can devour oil-spills to the multiple successors of penicillin. Developing them means enormous investments in brains, money and equipment. But, unlike other patentable “objects,” they cannot be adequately described in words or pictures; they must be observed and compared, with standard reference models preserved in controlled culture collections. International co-operation here is still very much at the beginning.

W.1.P.0., which only a few years ago was a handful of people dusting off last-century treaties above a bicycle shop in Berne, now has about 200 staff members in its secretariat, but remains as discreet as ever. It has almost no direct contact with the general public; there is no such thing as a worldwide patent and the ill-used writer or inventor cannot turn to it as a planetary better-business bureau. But not one of us who ever reads a book, listens to a recording, looks at a film, ingests an antibiotic, chooses an international brand of any product or service, or tapes a concert on his radio-receiver remains untouched bv its work. — O.F.N.S. Copyright.