Last week’s meeting of the Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP), established by the General Assembly last year, was attended by member states, seven inter-governmental organizations and 30 non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Representatives discussed five of the 45 recommendations for change formulated by WIPO member states in October last year.

These include providing more money to less developed countries (LDCs) to help them exploit their IP, posting information about technical assistance activities on WIPO’s website, asking WIPO to develop links between private companies and national offices in LDCs to help them access specialized databases for the purposes of patent searches, asking WIPO to expand its technical assistance programmes and helping member states to develop the infrastructure of their national IP offices.

The Committee’s plans for implementing these five recommendations will now be sent to the Secretariat. The draft report of the CDIP’s first meeting will available on WIPO’s website for comments by member states, inter-governmental organizations and NGOs. The revised draft report will then be considered for adoption at the beginning of the Committee’s second session, scheduled to be held in July.