Civil Society Urged to Join Anti-TRIPS Fight

Dionne Jackson Miller

Popular support for the struggle against the World Trade Organisation's agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is essential if the movement is to advance, say advocates of such apparently unrelated areas as free access to software and banning patents on living organisms and life-saving medications.

TRIPS was established as a result of the WTO's Uruguay round and, according to its advocates, will benefit both producers and users of intellectual property, while advancing economic and social welfare.

However, there is a growing set of critics who point to the problems the agreement creates for developing countries and who say the beneficiaries have primarily been the rich and powerful.

Michael Bailey, of the humanitarian organisation Oxfam, says there is a need to build broad coalitions and foster greater public concern that policy makers and corporations will be unable to ignore.

He told a WSF seminar that the new intellectual property rules are bad for teachers, patients, health care professionals, small and medium businesses, students and farmers, and noted that these groups are all potential supporters of the campaign to change existing global rules.

'We have to take this to the people in the streets and villages, put a human face on the issue, it has to be emotive and compelling,' he told the audience. 'NGOs and civil society with a concern for health, agriculture and small businesses development are crucial for building political pressure for change and reaching out to this wider public. Putting a human face on it helps with the all-important task of attracting the media.'

But according to Bailey, the efforts to build consensus and support must not only be concentrated in the South and among NGOs. He says that there are scientists, academics, and advocates of free trade who are opposed to the TRIPS agreement and who do not support the powers it gives to patent holders.

'They hate it because of the excesses and monopolistic powers it provides, and because of the inefficiencies it clearly has. They can be allies in achieivng our goal,' he said.

'We need to win over public opinion in the North to moderate or neutralise the governments there. Very few of them will be active supporters of the kinds of propositions we're putting out here, but at least we can weaken their resolve to defend the status quo.

'At the same time, we need pressure from within the developing countries to ensure that the governments of developing countries stand firm on this issue. I think the successes at Doha (WTO Ministerial Conference) on public health would not have been possible without this combination of mobilisation of the North and mobilisation of the South.'

In the meantime, Jean-Pierre Berlan from France's INRA (National Agronomy Research Institute), said it is 'absurd' that there are corporations and invididualst trying to patent genetic resources that have been used by humankind for hundreds of years.

According to Berlan, farmers are being adversely affected. 'This is a threat to us, animal and vegetable resources cannot be patented,' he said.

There are similar issues affecting the use of software, noted Richard Stallma, from the Free Software Foundation, the United States. He pointed to the way in which global rules are preventing the sharing of computer software.

'When I say free software, I'm thinking of freedom not price,' he explained. 'The issue is not whether you pay something to get a copy of the software. That's not the main issue, although for people in poor countries that is an important issue. The big issue is about what you're allowed to do once you have a copy. I insist on using free software that I am free to share with you.'

Stallma, who rejects the phrase 'intellectual property' as a 'propaganda term', also believes that having purchased software, one should be free to change it, or develop it to suit one's own purpose or society's purpose.

Despite the very serious concerns which were expressed about the effects of the global rules on intellectual property, the panelists generally appeared optimistic that the ongoing efforts to challenge those rules will be successful.

According to Michael Bailey, there have already been some successes, with public pressure forcing the drug companies to pull out of a court case against the South African government about its AIDS drug policies, and forcing the drug companies to reduce the prices of AIDS drugs in Africa and other developing countries.

'Beating the most powerful corporations in the world seems sometimes an impossible task, but I do genuinely believe that we can win the TRIPS issue. It's such a lousy agreement from so many points of view, and I also believe it is the weak point of the whole WTO system. We have made great progress over the last two years in challenging the legitimacy of the TRIPS agreement. I am confident that in a couple of years we will have some really substantial changes to celebrate,' Bailey said.

Stallma noted that the use of the free operating system GNU-LINUX is being replicated in other areas, with development of a free dictionary, encyclopedia and textbooks.

'I'm happy to say that the free software movement is spreading into these other areas, so I'm hopeful that for all these other functional works, there will develop free information that is part of human knowledge.'