The World Intellectual Property Organization General Assembly adopted the Development Agenda in September 2007, after three years of acrimonious debate. The Agenda radically transforms WIPO's mandate and reverberates throughout the international intellectual property regime, including in ongoing battles within the World Trade Organization over the future direction of “TRIPS”, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property. Yet despite its powerful symbolic message, the full extent of the Development Agenda's actual impact on the ground, both within WIPO and without, remains to be seen. This chapter places the WIPO Development Agenda in the context of evolving development policy generally, discusses the Agenda's principal provisions, and summarizes the multifarious contributions to the book.
Keywords: development policy, WIPO, TRIPS, development, New International Economic Order, developing countries, technology transfer, access to knowledge, United Nations