WIPO recommends multi-lateral policy approach to tackle IP issues linked to AI

By Emmanuel Legrand

The World Intellectual Property Organisation has identified Artificial Intelligence as a field that “is raising a broad and multi-disciplinary range of policy questions – one of those questions is property and intellectual property,” in the words of WIPO Director General Francis Gurry.  

  During the WIPO 2019 Assemblies in Geneva, which took place Sept. 30-Oct. 9, Gurry pointed to challenges created by new technologies, such as AI, that are “raising new questions about the application of existing IP policy, as well as the major question of whether the classical system of IP needs adjustment to cover perceived gaps in order to ensure that the IP system continues to serve the innovation eco-system effectively.”  

WIPO's Francis Gurry (photo: Photo: Emmanuel Berrod)

  WIPO hosted during the Assemblies a seminar on AI and IP, which identified issues related to the development of AI technologies. Speaking on the fringes of the 'WIPO Conversation on Intellectual Property and Artificial Intelligence', Daniela Simone from the University College London framed the challenges posed by AI and IP: “The question we need to really think about is whether it’s better to think of AI as an author or a creator in its own right, or as a tool of human creators.”  

Identifying the issues

  For Gurry, identifying key issues is the first step in a process that could eventually lead to policy proposals. “We are getting to the stage where we can see a process going forward for the identification of the issues that are important in the intellectual property field in this very challenging area of a new general purpose technology in the form of artificial intelligence,” said Gurry.  

  However, he added that pressures on the multilateral system “are impairing its capacity to produce timely results in the normative area, not the least of which is the faltering political will to adopt a multilateral approach and to develop multilateral solutions.”

  He added: “Ultimately, a race to develop the global rule or solution through national or regional regulatory competition, as opposed to a multilateral approach, will erode the value of the technologies themselves and their useful economic and social deployment. Technical operability depends on regulatory operability.”

Other WIPO news include:

  > During the Assemblies, over 1,200 delegates from WIPO’s 192 member states approved the WIPO programme and budget for the 2020-21 biennium, with revenue is projected to rise to CHF 882.8 million, a 6.4% increase over the previous biennium, while expenditures are expected to total 768.4 million, leaving a projected surplus of CHF 95.8 million. 

  > With the addition of Venezuela, New Zealand and Trinidad & Tobago, WIPO's Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled now counts 61 contracting parties covering 88 member states, with 47 additional member states joining the Treaty since the 2018 Assemblies. In addition, WIPO’s public-private partnership, the Accessible Books Consortium(ABC) now has 100 signatories, with the recent addition of Hachette Livre and the ABC Charter for Accessible Publishing.  

  > The thirty-Ninth Session of the World Intellectual Property Organisation's Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, to be held in Geneva, October 21-25, 2019, will discuss a proposal from Senegal and Congo to include the resale right (droit de suite) for visual artists in the agenda of future work by the SCCR.