Intellectual Property: Interfaces and Challenges

The Leme Charter

REBRIP

21/02/2006

Opinión

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This document is the outcome of the National Seminar "Intellectual Property: Interfaces and Challenges", organized by the Brazilian Network for the Integration of Peoples (REBRIP). At this seminar, the participants debated the drawbacks imposed by Intellectual Property rules in different areas of knowledge - intellectual property rules that serve to undermine the sustainability of, and the right to, full human, economic, social and cultural development of peoples. To all governments, international institutions and peoples of the world. We, representatives of civil society organisations, professionals, students and researchers, committed to the democratization of access to knowledge, to full health and to food security, particularly for poor people, firmly believe that if the current Intellectual Property regime is maintained, technologically-dependent countries and their peoples will suffer from having their human rights greatly undermined. Our understanding of Intellectual Property rights and their impact on the developing world is diametrically opposed to the logic of free trade and economic liberalization that forms the basis of prevailing negotiations between countries under the aegis of the World Trade Organisation and in the ambit of other multilateral fora. We form part of a global organized civil society movement which has consistently demonstrated the negative impact of the above negotiations on poor peoples, on the environment and on biodiversity. Exercising our citizenship: We repudiate the idea of using knowledge as just one more manufactured good. Overbearing and aggressive capitalism is encroaching on developing and technologically dependent countries, encouraging the perverse appropriation and privatization of intangible goods such as scientific knowledge, information, the arts, pharmaceutical formulae and biodiversity, as well as undermining the traditional knowledge possessed by communities. We consider that it is regrettable and inconceivable that knowledge capable of bringing about economic and social development, improvements in the quality of life and the survival of peoples should be treated as if it were simply a product and, as such, to be monopolized and marketed by developed countries. We defend the broader participation of organized civil society in all decision-making spheres, whether national or international, concerning aspects related to Intellectual Property, as the only way of exercising adequate social control. We call for total transparency in the decision-making processes involved in bilateral and multilateral commercial agreements and in the adjustments effected to the domestic legislations of individual countries. We call for the cessation of, and no further action on, new agreements under the aegis of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). We are now living the reality of a wretched situation resulting from the substantial inequality that exists between producer nations and those that are merely consumers of technology: in other words, between those countries that are holders of patents and other intellectual protection mechanisms and those who are dependent on them. The WTO has demonstrated that the organization does not represent the interests of developing countries and excluded populations. On the contrary, it has contributed to the deepening poverty and the asymmetries between rich and poor. Every effort must be made to guarantee the right to access by all people to essential goods, to the maintenance of and respect for current safeguards and to insist on trade aimed at producing more sustainable and fraternal integration among peoples. We reject the inclusion or continuation of discussion of topics related to Intellectual Property in free trade agreements of a regional nature and above all in north-south bilateral agreements, given that the inclusion of such topics is fundamentally a kind of currency employed to take over markets, increase the dependence of poor countries and exacerbate existing inequalities. We are radically opposed to the rules that signify the spread of the already restrictive WTO TRIPS agreements, which are abusive and inhuman. We declare that: 1. The patents monopoly on essential medical drugs and the barriers imposed against implementation of the legal flexibilities are the greatest obstacles impeding access of millions of people throughout the world to treatment and to full exercise of their right to health. The WTO flexibilities designed to improve access to essential drugs, such as enshrined in the Doha Declaration and the Resolution of 30 August, represent achievements by organized civil society that has continuously clamored for priority to be given to respect for the interests and the health of the less privileged populations. We observe with regret that the norms that have as their principal aim respect for human rights and that have become part of national legislations, such as the safeguards inherent in Intellectual Property matters, become automatically "illegal" on the global level when efforts are instituted to put them into practice. In other words, rights get transformed into crimes and countries are considered a threat and suffer retaliation from the holders of knowledge that could indeed be rendered flexible. 2. The media is not only economically powerful. It possesses an substantial capacity to interfere in social and cultural processes. The media is a classic oligopoly, consisting largely of major transnational corporations, which distributes throughout the planet the same films, music, books, games and news. The concept of Intellectual Property in this sector serves only to accentuate the power of these monopolies. At the same time, it undermines cultural diversity (the basic key for the construction of democratic societies) and fails to benefit those who actually produce culture. Quite the contrary, it serves to inhibit free expression and the dissemination of information. 3. The validity of patenting "inventions implemented by computer" or in other words the so-called ‘software patents’, is now a strategic concern, given the economic, social and geopolitical power inherent in the use of such patents. This is principally because the application of patents and Intellectual Property rules in the information technology area involves: (a) protecting major business empires that dominate almost the entire world market in those goods and services that increasingly constitute an important key to development; (b) putting obstacles in the way of solutions being created as the result of the use of free software and open codes for the democratization of knowledge, the creation of skills at local level and the overall economic development of communities. The constant threats from the north, above all from the United States, that software piracy is an economic problem of the south is a fallacious argument and conceals the real interest of the above which is to keep other countries technologically dependent. 4. The spread of Intellectual Property rights to different areas of life renders seeds, plants and even animals targets of patents protection. This has caused serious harm to entire populations and particularly to farmers and local communities. The latter have found it difficult to access natural goods, thereby contributing to the erosion of biodiversity and occasioning aggression to the food sovereignty of peoples while, at the same time, providing incentives to bio-piracy and the expropriation of the knowledge held by local populations. Within the framework of the struggle for the democratization of knowledge and in order to ensure human rights as the main guiding light for agreements among nations, we propose establishing a space where joint action and solidarity can be constructed in the defense of fair trade, of the well-being and improved quality of life for all peoples and for the building of a more equal world. All peoples, organisations and social movements committed to these principles are invited to join us in this struggle. REBRIP Executive Secretariat Rua das Palmeiras 90 – Botafogo - Rio de Janeiro – CEP 22270-070 Tel: 21 536-735

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