BDM103, Professional Practices, Copyright Organisations and their roles, 30 July

Discuss the following groups briefly and explain their roles.  More than one line,less than a paragraph for each.  Due in class Tuesday.

WIPO- World Intellectual Property Organisation
The global forum for intellectual property (IP), and affiliated with the United Nations.  One of their mandates is to administer how Traditional Knowledge (TK)  is treated by IP law.  Because most of TK is considered "public domain", an indigenous group could find a traditional medical remedy patented by a pharmaceutical company or a musical or literary work copied, sampled, reproduced without permission, acknowledgement or  monetary enrichment.
More about Traditional Knowledge and IP

Berne Convention  an international treaty that deals with the protection of works and rights of their authors.  3 principles apply:  "national treatment", "automatic protection" and "independence of protection".  Each state must protect each others works, protection is unconditional?, and protection exists even if it doesn't exist in the country of origin.

UNESCO- United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
It's mission is to "defend peace within the minds of men, since the mind is whence war comes".  It promotes collaboration between nations by providing for the sharing of education, scientific and cultural artifacts and institutions.

UCC- Universal Copyright Convention (1952)
UCC states that no nation that signs on should give their people's copyrights more status than other nation's people, symbol © must be attached to all works in order to formerly stake copyright plus copyright owner and year of first publication, "the minimum term of copyright in member nations must be the life of the author plus 25 years (except for photographic works and works of applied art, which have a 10-year term)", everybody has to let everybody else have the right to freely translate the work for up to 7 years from publication.  

TRIPS- Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
The World Trade Organisation's agreement on TRIPS was negotiated in the 1986-94 Uruguay Round and introduced IP rules into the multilateral trading system for the first time.  It attempted to level the playing field by creating a set of international rules. 

WTO- World Trade Organisation
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations.  They make agreements that cover goods, services and intellectual property.  Agreements are renegotiated as needed and members have their trade policies and practices reviewed periodically.