As World Intellectual Property Organization members gather this week to nominate one candidate to lead the organization for the next 6 years, many are urging a look past politics to see candidates for the skills and abilities they bring. But with six highly qualified candidates, and the advantage for countries of holding what is seen as a plum global post, members are likely feeling pressure over their votes.

The WIPO Coordination Committee will meet at WIPO in Geneva on 5 and 6 March 2020 to nominate a candidate for appointment. The committee acts as an executive body and comprises 83 rotating WIPO member states.  

The meeting is expected to be attended by hundreds of high-level officials, and comes as the UN and authorities in Geneva have acted to prohibit meetings larger than 1,000 people and are cancelling side meetings and tours of the UN out of global concern over the coronavirus.

There are currently six candidates for the post of WIPO director general: two from Latin America (Colombia, Peru), two from Asia (China, Singapore), one from Africa (Ghana), and one from Eurasia (Kazakhstan). Several of the candidates have decades of experience in WIPO.

Once nominated, the successful candidate will be appointed by a special session of the WIPO General Assembly, which is scheduled to meet on 7 and 8 May 2020. The new director general would take office at the end of September 2020.

The current Director General, Francis Gurry, is due to retire on 30 September this year after completing two six-year terms. The WIPO Director General serves a six-year term.

WIPO announced that it received 10 candidatures for the post of Director General by the deadline of 30 December 2019, and four have since withdrawn. The bios of all of the candidates are available here.

The remaining six candidates are:

  • Mr Marco Matías Alemán (Colombia)
  • Mr Ivo Gagliuffi Piercechi (Peru)
  • Dr Edward Kwakwa (Ghana)
  • Mr Daren Tang (Singapore)
  • Ms Saule Tlevlessova (Kazakhstan)
  • Ms Wang Binying (China)

The candidates that have already withdrawn are:

  • Prof Adebambo Adewopo (Nigeria)
  • Mr Kenichiro Natsume (Japan)
  • Mr Dámaso Pardo (Argentina)
  • Mr Jüri Seilenthal (Estonia)

The terms of outgoing Deputy Directors General and Assistant Directors General also expire on 30 September 2020.

A look at the candidates (alphabetical order)

Marco Alemán (Colombia) – is director of the WIPO Patent Law Division, with 20 years of experience in WIPO, and the former head of the Colombia IP Office. He is well-recognized in WIPO and is seen as approachable and professional, with a high level of expertise and experience in patent matters.

Alemán is an IP scholar and author who served as an IP attorney and has spent decades working on issues of innovation and IP, especially related to patents but also trademarks and other IP.

He has had close involvement and oversight of committees and initiatives at WIPO, including the high-pressure Standing Committee on the Law of Patents.

Alemán has received numerous messages of support including a range of IP lawyers, academics and representatives of organizations, including the endorsement of a global inventors association in Geneva as “the best candidate.”

Alemán’s background and vision are more fully explained in a dedicated website to his candidacy.

Ivo Gagliuffi (Peru) – is a longstanding IP lawyer, academic and head of Peru’s IP office since 2016. An energetic and visionary candidate, Gagliuffi offers a relative “outsider” perspective, and has put forward many plans for WIPO if elected director general.

Among Gagliuffi’s plans are: the consolidation of WIPO’s digital services using artificial intelligence and blockchain; and bringing IP closer to small businesses and non-professionals in order to increase awareness of its importance through a “World Intellectual Property Culture.”

Other plans include: boosting international policies for member states in their fight against IP theft online and offline; promote a virtual catalogue of best practices in IP; and promoting a more comprehensive vision of IP with related disciplines such as competition and consumer protection.

In his bio, he also details numerous accomplishments in his time at the Peru IP Office, the National Institute for the Defense of Competition and Intellectual Property (INDECOPI). These include elaboration of the first Peruvian IP national policy, with the support of WIPO, and joining or implementing various other WIPO treaties.

Edward Kwakwa (Ghana) – distinguished himself during his 13 years as WIPO’s legal counsel, spanning two directors general and seen handling a variety of complex issues with a professional, approachable, and skilled manner. In what numerous articles have characterized as a battle between the US and China, Kwakwa’s name has come up (eg, see here and here) as a staid and sensible middle ground.

Kwakwa has 23 years of experience within WIPO, and since 2016 has served as senior director of the WIPO Department of Traditional Knowledge and Global Challenges. This department oversees the ongoing negotiations in the Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore. It also is responsible for the growth areas in WIPO of public health, climate change, and food security as they relate to IP and innovation.

He did his graduate studies at Yale Law School in the United States, and in Canada, and worked in a US law firm early on before providing legal counsel to the UN High Commission on Human Rights and the World Trade Organization en route to WIPO. Outgoing DG Gurry also previously served as a WIPO legal counsel prior to assuming the WIPO DG mantle.

The 55-member African Union has unanimously endorsed Kwakwa to be the next director general of WIPO. Africa has 19 of the 83 seats on the Coordination Committee. He also appears to have secondary support from developed countries, though they may prefer Tang as a first choice. Africa has had a director general from the region in the past.

Daren Tang (Singapore) – the chief executive of the IP Office of Singapore, has a background in government, including as a trade negotiator. He did his graduate studies in law in the United States, and was a lead negotiator in the Singapore-US free trade agreement.

Tang has been serving as the chair of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) for several years, and has been credited with moving highly fraught negotiations forward with diplomatic skill. But he is not a longstanding WIPO insider, offering perhaps a somewhat fresh perspective.

Being from Singapore, Tang is said to be able to bridge the North-South divide in WIPO, and is seen as having support of developed countries like the US and many in Europe, as well as developing countries who may look to the Singapore model of successful growth with IP. Singapore has sought to position itself as a regional IP hub, and has the guidance of former senior WIPO official Geoffrey Yu.

Among his accomplishments, Tang worked on the regional hub initiative, also on IP initiatives in the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), and has shown an aptitude for launching new technologies for IP. He also is social media-savvy, regularly publishing articles on LinkedIn and other media.

At the SCCR, there has been halting progress on the longstanding agenda item to promote international instruments in whatever form on copyright limitations and exceptions for libraries, archives, museums, education and research, in line with the committee’s mandate (paragraph 19) from the 2012 General Assembly.

The current WIPO Deputy Director General for copyright, Sylvie Forbin, has been perceived to be closely aligned to international publishers who have opposed all elements of the limitations and exceptions agenda. Library, archive and museum communities have written to DG Gurry, with no substantive engagement, according to sources in the community. Nonetheless, with Gurry coming to the end of his term, key decisions will need to be made about the leadership of the Copyright and Creative Industries Sector. The research community would see a change in direction as necessary for progress in SCCR, the sources said. Accordingly, a key concern of this community is a commitment of any new DG to appoint a new DDG for copyright that would have the mission and capacity to move the agenda forward in a balanced way and not be beholden to vested interests.

Saule Tlevlessova (Kazakhstan) – who has headed the Eurasian Patent Office since 2016, also has significant experience inside WIPO. She comes from Kazakhstan, in the regional group of Central Asian, Caucasus, and Eastern European European Countries, which is dominated by Russia. She did her graduate studies in Moscow and attended the diplomatic academy under the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs before moving into the Kazakh government and then to WIPO.

Tlevlessova published an opinion piece in Europe making the case that she is the middle ground to defuse the politicization at WIPO by the US-backed Tang and China’s Wang, and that she should be elected for the “survival of IP.”

Binying Wang (China) – already the highest ranking Chinese official in WIPO history, is a WIPO insider with nearly 30 years of experience in the organization. She served in a variety of senior administrative posts until she was elevated to deputy director general (one of only a few officials directly below the director general) by Francis Gurry after his election in 2008. 

China has seen a rapid rise in IP filing activity in recent years. As with many WIPO officials, Wang is seen as having kept ties to China, which has been vigorously promoting her candidacy in recent weeks through state-run media, including by using accusatory language against the United States in the process.

A stream of government articles and statements (such as here and here) promoting and defending Wang has been issued over the past few weeks, arguing that the fears about China are not fairly applied to Wang, who is cited as a well-respected IP expert. The Chinese mission in Geneva issued two strongly worded statements as well saying the WIPO election should not be politicized, and that the China’s IP protection “shall not be discredited,” denying any theft.

This rhetoric sought to counter profound concerns raised by some, particularly in the US, about placing China in charge of the global IP agency, which houses the world’s patent and trade secrets and whose mission is largely about the protection of IP. China is consistently cited as the source of the majority of the world’s counterfeit products, trade secret theft and copyright infringement, though the country continues to take measures to improve its performance. And trademark theft is apparently exploding in China.

Among those voicing concern have been John Bolton, a frequent critic of the UN system who served for a period as President Trump’s national security advisor, and Trump adviser Peter Navarro, a China trade hardliner. Navarro last week offered detailed assertions of China’s effort to influence elections in order to take over international organizations, and ways in which it has then tried to bend UN agencies’ agendas to fit its interests. Four bipartisan US congressional leaders also raised alarm about China heading WIPO.

Wang is in charge of trademark and geographical indications issues at WIPO. This also includes oversight of the controversial 2015 negotiation among some WIPO members of the Geneva Act of the Lisbon Agreement on Appellations of Origin and Geographical Indications. The agreement boosted protection of GIs over the outcry of some non-GI-oriented nations led by the United States.

Regional representation and committee membership

It does not work in China’s favor that it already holds the top post in several international organizations, including the International Telecommunication Union, directly across the street from WIPO, headed by Houlin Zhao, who has two years to go in his second four-year term. China also has the head of the important Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, the UN Industrial Organization in Vienna, the International Civil Aviation Organization, and via Hong Kong held the helm of the World Health Organization in Geneva until recently. The ITU and FAO could be said to be sensitive like WIPO as they pertain to global telecommunications and agriculture.

Separately, under Gurry, China and Russia were given in-country offices of WIPO, which caused upset among other WIPO members who were not informed before the deals were done by Gurry’s office and who wanted such offices as well.

It has been generally held by many WIPO members that there should be a rotation of geographical representation at the top of the agency. Many believe the time has arrived for a candidate from Asia or Latin America/Caribbean, neither of which has had the leadership post yet. [Note: Australia, where Gurry is from, is not in the Asia-Pacific region in WIPO but rather in the developed country group). In Latin America, it was noted that Brazil did not put forward a candidate, perhaps in recognition that it already holds the top post at the neighboring World Trade Organization. A Brazilian candidate narrowly lost the 2008 WIPO DG election to Gurry by one vote.

China is its own regional group with WIPO. The 192 WIPO members have formed groups by region or economic size, and as candidates tend to gather support from within their group, Wang might have been expected to be hurt by the fact that China is the only country that represents a regional group by itself, not part of the rest of the Asia nor of the group of large economies. But sources have downplayed the regional factor as other factors such as potential promises of economic benefits to countries or possible posts within the WIPO administration may have broken up regional unity.

As noted, the African Union did come out with uniform endorsement of Kwakwa, but some have conjectured that promises from China of economic investment in infrastructure or other activity in their countries could draw away some African countries. As well, China’s influence might attract some supporters from the neighboring and other regions, including Europe, sources said.

The distribution of the 83 members of the Coordination Committee is explained in document WO/CC/77/INF/1 REV. The list of committee members is as follows:

Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), Denmark, Djibouti, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia (ad hoc), Finland, France, Gabon, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea (South Korea), Romania, Russia, Senegal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland (ex officio), Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States of America, Viet Nam, Zimbabwe (83).

Background

The procedures for nomination and appointment state: “The nomination of a candidate for Director General should, if possible, be made by consensus. This will facilitate the appointment of the Director General by the General Assembly. However, it is recognized that voting will probably be a necessary means of building consensus for the nomination of a candidate. Efforts to nominate a candidate via consultations leading to consensus are welcome at any stage of the selection process, but such efforts should not unduly delay the decision-making process.”

In the last election, in 2014, there were four candidates, from Estonia, Nigeria and Panama in addition to Gurry. It was somewhat unusual that the race drew competitors to the incumbent, Gurry, who was up for re-election. More often in the UN system incumbents run unopposed for a second term.

In the election of 2008, there were 15 candidates and several rounds of voting. In the final round, Gurry secured 42 votes and Jose Graça Aranha of Brazil received 41.

The next Director General will be WIPO’s fifth, following Francis Gurry of Australia (2008-2020), Kamil Idris of Sudan (1997-2008), Arpad Bogsch of the United States (1973-1997) and Georg Bodenhausen of the Netherlands (1970-1973). After Bogsch, term limits were agreed by member states.