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The WIPO secretariat just published the summary of a draft report for this session. It says that member states need more time to "examine" the proposals "indepth". This will take place on a second IIM on 2005-06-20 to 24. Submissions by member states possible until 2005-05-30.

If the fact that another meeting is planned already means that there was no consensus - not exactly surprising after the tense debates -, it also means that the conservative side, namely the USA and the lobby of the rights-holding industry, have not succeeded in pushing the issue into a subcommittee to "disappear" it.

After haggling about expressions for a bit, the debate almost instantly reached a boiling point when Trinidad and Tobago, who are on the progressive side, suggested that more than one additional meeting might be needed to manage the "transition" of WIPO. That comment prompted a sort of shock, as it referred to a massive change in WIPO as an established fact.

Instantly, the debate reached a boiling point and was interrupted. The representatives of the rich countries hectically huddled together:

Then, the regional coordinators disappeared into a side room to negotiate. The degree of transparency at WIPO is indeed striking.

That the next IIM in June is to last a full five days means that members expect that session to be no less conflictive than the present one. It also means that the conservative side, namely the USA, have not succeeded in pushing the issue into a subcommittee to "disappear" it.

At the moment, the Friends of Development and the United States with their allies are confronting each other at eye level, without either backing down. This might go on for quite a while. The Chairman is already suggesting that a third IIM might be necessary.

The procedure for preparing a report is the usual one. The Chairman, in this case the representative of Paraguay, has great power over what will appear in the final report. He is an interesting figure: While obviously acceptable to both sides of the debate, I've been told that during the beginning of his work with WIPO, he expressed views similar to those now expressed by the Friends of Development.

Again and again, the term "Intellectual Property" is showing itself to be misleading. In my view, it works for the rights-holding industry. Every time we say "Software Patents are not a good idea", these people go: "So you want to tear down the intellectual property system and abolish patents, copyrights, trademarks? Are you crazy? You're communists, that's what you are."

In an interesting private conversation Geoff Tansey, member of the Food Ethics Council and consultant to the Quaker UN Office, suggested to me an alternative term:

"We should be talking about monopoly privileges, not IP rights, because that's what they are, as Peter Drahos said in his book "A philosophy of Intellectual Property". This is an idea that for example the Food Ethics Council has argued for. They called for a change in the language we use to more accurately reflect the reality of what these things are - monopoly privileges. They're privileges granted to me as an author, for example, to exclude others from my work."

For further elaborations, he pointed to the 2003 report "TRIPS with everything" - Intellectual property and the farming world, which he helped prepare.

He also offered a way of clarifying the diffuse term "Civil Society", by replacing it with "BINGOs" and "PINGOs": Business Interest Organisations and Public Interest Organisations. Though it was a rather informal suggestion, he definitely has a point. I may want to adopt that terminology.