south-north development monitor SUNS [Email Edition]

SUNS #4452 ,Thursday, 10 June 1999

contents

Trade: WIPO to make industrial design registration easier (Chakravarthi Raghavan, Geneva)

Trade: WTO closes door to demonstrating farmers (Someshwar Singh, Geneva)

Latin America: OK to gene tinkering, despite potential misuse (IPS, Panama City)

Brazil: Trade surplus fails to dispel gloom (IPS, Rio de Janeiro)

Asia: Return to growth seen for 1999 (IPS, Washington)

Pakistan: Natural gas dreams menace wildlife park (IPS, Islamabad)

India: Last stand of tribals displaced by Narmada dam (IPS, New Delhi)

Colombia: National flower among endangered species (IPS, Bogota)

Some excerpts from selected articles:

Trade: WIPO to make industrial design registration easier

Geneva, 9 June (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- A three-week diplomatic conference under the auspices of the World Intellectual Property Organization to forge a treaty to enlarge the geographical scope of the Hague System of international registration and protection of industrial designs begins here on 16 June.

The present membership of the Hague Union (countries that are parties to the 1934 Agreement for protection of industrial designs and the 1960 agreement for an international registration system) has only 29 members.

Many of the major countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan are not members. Except for Indonesia in Asia and Surinam in Latin America, other Asians and Latin Americans and Caribbean nations are not members.

Industrial designs are features concerning the look of an article -- for example, shape, ornamentation, pattern, configuration etc.

They are different from designs relating to functional utility of products -such as improvements in a machinery. In some countries these are protected as "utility models", but are essentially minor innovations.

The TRIPS Agreement of the World Trade Organization does not cover "utility models". But it requires protection for industrial designs, and members are to provide protection for a minimum period of ten years for industrial designs that are "new or original".

For industrial designs, the conditions to be satisfied to get protection are that they should be "independently created and should be new or original. Countries could provide against protection, on the ground of lack of novelty or originality if the design does not significantly differ from known designs.

The TRIPS also requires that in the industrial designs for textiles, the costs (in terms of fees etc) and examination or protection should not unreasonable impair the opportunity to get protection.

Trade: WTO closes door to demonstrating farmers

Geneva, June 9 (Someshwar Singh) -- The headquarters of the World Trade Organization (WTO) preferred to shut down completely this afternoon in anticipation of a demonstration by farmers. Trade officials said the Geneva police and their own security had advised them to shut shop and go home in the afternoon, because of fears of possible recurrence of violence - like the one in May 1998.

That demonstration had been organized by the PGA (People's Global Action) movement against globalization, and the WTO as its instrument. Though demonstrators were blamed for the violence on the streets on that occasion, it subsequently came out that it was a small batch of young hooligans who joined the demonstrators and created mayhem, and that the police, with some tact and firmness, could have sequestered the hooligans and prevented damage.

The representatives of the farmers, who are on a European tour and had come to Geneva (with a Swiss NGO host), had difficulty entering the main United Nations building to give a press conference Wednesday morning, even as the 87th session of the International Labour Conference was actually holding session within the same complex -- discussing among others about workers rights and problems of increased marginalised people as a result of Globalization.

The UN's Palais-des-Nations complex in Geneva for months now has been like an "armed fortress" or "prison" - a people-free and pedestrian- unfriendly complex.

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