They don't know what they are negotiating

Intellectual property rights and wrong

An interesting confession made by the economist and nobel laureate Joseph E Stiglitz: he admits that the diplomats did not know what they were doing when they negotiated the TRIPS* agreement during the Uruguay - Round.

[* (trade related aspects of intellectual property rights)]

"I suspect that most of those who signed the agreement did not fully understand what they were doing. If they had, would they have willingly condemned thousands of AIDS sufferers to death because they might no longer be able to get affordable generic drugs? Had the question been posed in this way to parliaments around the world, I believe that TRIPS would have been soundly rejected."

The only thing they knew, he is saying...

"it was clear that there was more interest in pleasing the pharmaceutical and entertainment industries than in ensuring an intellectual-property regime that was good for science, let alone for developing countries."

But it is exactly here where the debate on CSR has to start: . Ethics vs Profits, how to combine Social Responsibility with market objectives. It's a difficult challenge..

But, let's hop that WIPO [World Intellectual Property Organization] will succeed when trying to build a more development oriented IP regime. At least, it is on their agenda now.

Read Stiglitz yourself:
http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/a2k/2005-August/000555.html

or in German:
http://www.ftd.de/me/cl/19245.html