There's an interesting group of folks at the UCLA conference on the WIPO Development Agenda this weekend. Carolyn Deere from the Global Economic Governance Programme at Oxford gave a good talk discussing "the political dynamics of IP reform in developing countries: the relevance and influence of WIPO." She's concerned with how to make the Development Agenda real, on the ground, and her methodology for the work she presented was cross national comparison of what different countries are doing.

She's found that developing countries are actuallly quite diverse in the types of IPR regimes they have, and whether or not they take advantage of exceptions they're allowed. Some countries are adopting TRIPS+ requirements but there is not uniformity. For example, developing countries have until 2015 to implement TRIPS but 14 of the 32 LDCs implemented TRIPS plus legislation even while negotiating for more time (!) They didn't have bilaterals with the US, they hadn't been 301 listed, so why did they go so far so fast?

She also looked at enforcement, and found that higher standards don't necessarily correspond with stronger enforcement. For example, sometimes countries with moderate standards have high enforcement levels, while others have high standards that are not enforced. Perhaps, she says, (if you're an IP holder?) maybe you're better off with moderate standards that are enforceable.

So, why do countries behave the way they do? She focuses on 3 factors at the national level:

1. engagement of interest groups and parliaments.
Historically most parliaments haven't played much of a role in IP policy; only a few countries have had national level debates, and most have limited expertise. So there are few checks and balance in most parliaments for what is happening with IPRs. Most countries also don't have interest groups involved in IP. Many NGOs weren't around until 2000 and the TRIPS fights, and even then, it was mostly a bunch of local chapters of int'l NGOs getting involved. Oxfam, MSF, etc. So the national level politics are more part of an international game.

* Question: so what is the role of mass based movements? Farmers movements, Treatment Action Campaign, etc.?

2. government capacity and coordination.
Some governments have national level coordination, but most countries did their negotiations solely guided by their IP offices. So the agricultural ministries, cultural ministries, health ministries aren't involved as they should be.

3. relationship between external and internal faces of national governments. For example, there's a regional IP authority in southern Africa, but not much expertise at the national level. Diplomats responsible for negotiating at the international level aren't necessarily in good coordination with national governments.

There are also international political factors, including:

Coercive power factors like TRIPS plus trade, investement and IP agreements, WTO disputes, 301 pressures, industry and diplomatic pressures.

Ideational power factors, including capacity building, which she focused on more here. She had a nice chart of capacity building programs (technical assistance): WIPO: $220 million. USAID: 20 million. EC: 38 million. Euro Patent office: 20 million, USPTO: 50 million.

Carolyn's talk ended with a call for an anlysis of the role of IP offices themselves. A real public policy approach to IP reforms would mean involving lots of different actors. We should open the black box of the national IP office. The Development Agenda has been looking top down, we need to look bottom up. And we'll come up with a different set of proposals for DA, but also for various national governments about what they should do.