The Centre on Knowledge Governance (CKG) was launched in front of a packed audience on Dec 3rd at the Geneva Graduate Institute, featuring top government representatives, professors and civil society leaders. The Centre on Knowledge Governance is a project of American University’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP) and the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, with support of the Arcadia Fund.
The event was opened by Sean Flynn, Director of the Geneva Centre on Knowledge Governance, who welcomed the standing-room-only and robust online crowd.
The first discussion featured a new book by Wend Wendland, former Director of the Traditional Knowledge Division at the World Intellectual Property Organization. Wendland highlighted aspects of “The Journey to the WIPO Treaty on Genetic Resources and Associated Technical Knowledge”, which is available for order here.
Commenting were Ambassador Guilherme de Aguiar Patriota, Permanent Representative of Brazil to the World Trade Organization, who chaired the WIPO treaty negotiation, and Valmaine Toki, law professor at Waikato University and a Maori Indigenous representative at the UN.
This was followed by a panel discussion on the future of knowledge governance in the multilateral system featuring Ruth Okediji, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, Ellen ‘t Hoen, Director, Medicines Law & Policy, and Prof. Flynn.
The panels were moderated by Ben Cashdan, South African TV Producer and former economic advisor to President Nelson Mandela, who is communications and development director at the new centre.
Book Launch
Wendland and Patriota gave a first-hand account of their roles in bringing the decades-long negotiation for the genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge treaty to a successful outcome that many may have begun to doubt could ever be reached.
Wendland said the book tells the story of “setbacks, false dawns, missed opportunities, and plot twists” in 25 years of negotiations. Then in 2022, a high-level final treaty negotiation was set, and “what was beginning to curdle into despair was transformed into early signs of hope,” with the treaty finally reaching agreement in May 2024. The treaty is now in the process of being ratified by member states before it can take effect, among other things establishing rules for disclosing the origin of traditional knowledge in patent applications under penalty of sanctions. Patriota, for his part, said it is complex in Brazil but could be done and believes that the 15 ratifications necessary worldwide (with two already in Africa) for it to enter into effect is “viable”.
Patriota, who also steered the conclusion of a complex Development Agenda at WIPO years earlier, said when he stepped into these latest talks, he noticed “huge issues of trust”, with sides suspicious of the real intentions of other parties. He sought to find balance and afterward, many acknowledged that he was fair after all.
“I think members kind of wanted to see a conclusion to this lengthy process. I think they were willing to have an outcome,” he said. The outcome had to be moderated in a way that would be “technically acceptable or sound, that looked functional within the IP context that would not be seen or perceived as something that would disrupt patent examination or processing.”
Toki called the treaty a “great first step”, and said she is “cautiously optimistic” that future revisions of the treaty will include support for fair and equitable benefit sharing from the use of genetic resources and traditional knowledge and also provide a framework for the protection of traditional knowledge. “I’m hoping that during the revision part of the process, more can be done to realize Indigenous rights,” she said.
Meanwhile, Wendland went into detail on the fainter prospects for a “rinse and repeat” approach to a related WIPO treaty covering traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, a topic that he expects to do more thinking and writing on in the future.
On another front, Patriota explored a new and rising issue of the cultural, for instance musical, “wealth of the South”, and how that is going to be fed into artificial intelligence models with the risk of lost remuneration to the individual human creators. There is a focus on making the system “more human” and to work to the benefit of a larger clientele of people.
Health Issues
The launch took place during a week that drew numerous interested parties to Geneva for meetings of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) and the World Health Organization Intergovernmental Working Group on the WHO Pandemic Agreement.
Ellen ‘t Hoen, who has been following the WHO progress, talked about a lesson learned after the early days of the AIDS pandemic, when drugs were priced far out of reach of sub-Saharan Africans (who bore the brunt of the pandemic), but available in developed countries. The lesson about the need to make medicines accessible globally was learned, but was not used when it came to the Covid-19 pandemic, as vaccines were hoarded in the North and widely unavailable in the South, she said. Critical vaccines were developed quickly with public funding, but without access conditions attached to the funding there was no requirement that they would become equitably available. Instead companies made the vaccines available to the highest bidders, and eschewed participating in vaccine sharing mechanisms such as the Medicines Patent Pool or the Covid-19 Technology Access Pool. And while the WHO pandemic treaty was agreed in “record time” by some negotiation standards, the technology transfer component was left weak, and continuing negotiations on pathogen access and benefit sharing taking place this week – with all non-state actors, including relevant parties such as ‘t Hoen, left outside the room — could lead to lead to effectively closed-door renegotiation of the pandemic treaty.
Okediji stressed the importance, as well as the variability by nation, of limitations and exceptions to IP rights for public goods. It is further important to discern whether an identified category of limitations and exceptions “at the multilateral level can facilitate consensus because it is the kind of knowledge good for which all countries have a common concern.”
Taking a point by Patriota further, she said AI is reinforcing an ecosystem that is “structured around private arrangements that make equitable dissemination difficult.” And it is not pointed to clearly enough in the advocacy context. “It’s not as simple as they’re getting more than me so let’s re-divide the pie,” she said. It is reflecting the same “reproducibility” that has been seen throughout the IP system.
Flynn emphasized the notion of “public AI” – the idea that AI tools can become utilities for the public good, and even be developed with public money – as an important topic for study at the new centre. One potential way to do this is to train AI on small language models, rather than whole-internet based models, so they become more fit-for-purpose to non-English speakers or for specific tasks. But creating a diversity of language models runs up against copyright questions as in many countries researchers do not have access to whole works necessary to build an AI program.
James Love of Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), speaking from the audience, reinforced the idea offered by Okediji and Patriota, and suggested different copyright categories under AI regulation so that for instance creators would have more say over their creations. And he reinforced the idea of de-linking IP incentives from the supply of public goods, an idea that might be revived for study at the centre.
On that, ‘t Hoen added that there might be a place for focusing on the potential of AI to “accelerate and make pharmaceutical innovation much less costly than … the IP-based innovation incentive system that we have today.”
Okediji then provided a summary of research topics that could be taken forward. She said the role of competition law, or antitrust law, is “bubbling under the surface” in the areas of AI, medicines, and copyright, as there is such a consolidation of markets around technologies.
Second is a question about the future of multilateralism, pointing to recent US bilateral agreements that look like the sweeping agreements of a century ago, which threaten to undermine multilateral negotiations such as those happening at the WHO. She also suggested examining the distinction between procedural treaties and substantive treaties that establish norms. “There’s a bigger role for how we think about knowledge governance and the kinds of limits that technology protection will have,” she said.
Finally, she echoed others in calling for “a greater sense of accountability from major firms who both produce technologies that we want, but also produce them in ways that we find less desirable.” At the moment, she concluded, “we do not have a functioning multilateral framework for accountability by governments outside of the human rights framework.”
New Centre to Focus on Geneva Institutions’ Impact on the World
The new centre, housed at the Graduate Institute steps away from the UN agencies, will focus on research, technical assistance, and teaching, and will include an informational component. It has a growing list of collaborating research centres around the world, as well as governmental, intergovernmental, and civil society partners.
At the outset, Flynn announced the first members of an advisory board for the centre, including ‘t Hoen, James Love of KEI, and Carlos Correa of the South Centre, all of whom he deemed mentors.
The goal of the centre, Flynn told the event, is “to conduct research to provide technical assistance to delegations and stakeholders, host training programmes, sponsor platforms for multi-stakeholder discussions, all of which promote an idea of information justice and knowledge governance.”
It also aims to fill “holes” left by past organizations in Geneva, such as the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), and the centre is endeavoring to act as host for the revival of the Geneva-based policy publication Intellectual Property Watch (IP-Watch). Former IP-Watch Director William New was on hand for the launch event.
Designated areas of focus for the centre so far include: Access to knowledge for education, research, and cultural heritage; AI and computational research; recognition and remuneration of authors and other creators; traditional knowledge governance; and medical innovation and access.
Visit the Centre on Knowledge Governance.
