Geneva summit to discuss online intellectual property

Politicians and business leaders meet today in Geneva to thrash out what could be the first international guidelines on online intellectual property.

The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) is hosting a 500-strong, two-day summit, in the hope of building an industry consensus boosting confidence in electronic commerce.

Francis Gurry, assistant director general at WIPO, said the two main barriers to ecommerce were the lack of infrastructure in developing countries, and low consumer confidence. Global infrastructure is the responsibility of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), he says. But Gurry told Silicon.com that WIPO could help build consumer trust.

"We feel that with an appropriate intellectual property environment, there can be more confidence on the part of consumers that they are dealing with the names they recognise in the real world," he said.

Keynote speaker, US commerce secretary William Daley, plans to present a four-point plan for the Web. He will recommend international development, greater personal privacy, measures to boost consumer confidence and no online taxes. Senior executives from AOL Europe, Silicon Graphics, India's MindTree Consulting, AT&T and Fujitsu will also speak.

Professor Andy Hopper, MD of AT&T labs in Cambridge, plans to outline his hopes for WIPO's future role.

"The WIPO could take the role of a trust repository to prove prior art," Hopper told Silicon.com. "This archive wouldn't hold original documents, but it would hold encrypted statements that dated their publication and showed they had not been changed since then."

Hopper also expects the WIPO to start drawing up standard contracts for hardware and software licences, and to speed up the process of patenting.

The WIPO has a range of potential uses for the summit. They include international guidelines for best practice, treatises, case-by-case problem solving, infrastructure development and general education.