The WIPO Secretariat held a briefing on its plans for regional seminars on limitations and exceptions to copyright for Libraries, Archives, Museums and Educational & Research Institutions, on April 3. Sylvie Forbin chaired the meeting and led the description of WIPO’s plans.

The seminars will be held in the following times and locations:

  • Asia-Pacific, Singapore, 29-30 April
  • Africa, Nairobi, Kenya, 12-13 June
  • GRULAC, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 4-5 July

Two of the meetings will coincide with other regional meetings. In Nairobi, 10-11 June, there will be a meeting with heads of intellectual property offices in Africa. In Santo Domingo there will be a meeting with heads of regional Intellectual Property offices 2-3 July.

WIPO will invite member states of the region to send representatives, and will generally provide travel support for one representative per country. The Asia-Pacific meeting will invite 42 member states (from the Asia Pacific and Arab region). The Africa meeting will include 55 member state invitees. The Latin American meeting will include 34 member state invitees.

Three categories of observers may attend the meetings at their own expense, subject to restrictions on space at the meetings:

  • Member states from other regions, with priority given to member states from regions that do not have their own regional meeting.
  • IGO and NGO representatives from international organizations accredited with WIPO whose scope of activity is related to the subject of the seminar;
  • Regional or national orgs or entities from the region where the seminar is being held that have a scope of activity related to the subject matter of the seminar.

The Secretariat described the space for each meeting as generally limited to between 100-120 participants and that invited countries would be permitted to bring more than one participant. NGO participation at each meeting thus may be limited.

NGOs will have their applications screened by the Secretariat to ensure that they meet the criteria for the meeting (be either international or from the region and “whose scope of activity is related to the subject of the seminar”). There is no deadline for application to attend, but the Secretariat urged application as soon as possible.

There are 8 NGO applications to attend the Singapore meeting thus far. Applications for the other meetings are not open.

The Singapore meeting application is at https://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/2019/regional_seminar_aspac.html The code needed to apply to attend the meeting is SINGAPORE2019. This is only a code to apply to attend – it does not ensure acceptance to participate in the meeting.

Ms Forbin described the objective of each meeting to be “to have as much discussion as possible between observers and WIPO-invitees.”

Each seminar will be open in a plenary setting to introduce the objectives, the agenda and the modalities of discussion. WIPO experts will describe the L&E studies and typologies they have prepared with a focus on the region of the meeting.

Presentations will be followed by two half-day open discussions in smaller groups led by facilitators. Each group will have a member state as Chair and as a Rapporteur.

In the afternoon of the second day, the results of the discussion will be presented in the form of an outcome document by the chair or reporter.

According to Ms. Forbin, the goal of the document will be to “to give order to the information to give it sense. We will not have conclusions, but observations only.”

Ms. Forbin described the hope that members states would provide information for the meeting through an instrument prepared by the Secretariat: “We wish that member states come with a lot of background information of everything they have collected from their colleagues. For that, we will send a list of questions that will allow member states to discuss with their colleagues, and gather experience and worries that you can raise to experts and participants.”

In response to a question from Education International, Ms. Forbin stated that the questions for member states would finalized “by next week, so by then you should be able to have them.”