The World Intellectual Property Organization and the sustainable development agenda: new article

My article "The World Intellectual Property Organization and the sustainable development agenda" is now published.  This paper was developed as a keynote talk for the Intellectual Property and Sustainable Development Conference which took place on September 6, 2018 at the Queensland University of Technology.

Abstract
The UN’s Agenda for Sustainable Development is being taken up throughout the international system, including at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). This article examines WIPO’s approach to the sustainable development agenda in light of its past approaches to development. In the first part of this article, I outline some of the longstanding major critiques of the discourse of sustainability, noting that these critiques anticipated the current lamentable status of a sustainable development agenda for WIPO. Next, I discuss the history of development agendas at WIPO in the context of WIPO’s history and role at the centre of the global intellectual property system. I then ask what role intellectual property has to play in the SDGs. I conclude by suggesting that an adequate agenda for sustainable development is unlikely to be developed at WIPO and must, rather, come from outside.

Read the full article.

Citation: Bannerman, Sara. "The World Intellectual Property Organization and the sustainable development agenda." Futures 122(2020): 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2020.102586

Thanks to Professor Matthew Rimmer and the QUT IP and Innovation Law Research Program for their invitation to the conference. Thanks also to Emmanuel Appiah for his research assistance. This research would not have been possible without the support of, and funding from, McMaster University and the Canada Research Chairs program.