UNU symposium New York
Posted: 0000-00-00
Can an Intellectual Property regime designed to protect private interests be reformed to "lock everyone in"? What results when government authorities promote free, open source software in their jurisdictions? Who (if anyone) should own or control access to the human genome sequence? What parallels can be drawn with the fundamental principles of 'openness' for science and society as a whole?
These were among the issues discussed at a Research Symposium titled Challenging Intellectual Property: Access to Knowledge Issues in Open Source and Medicine, at the UN Headquarters, New York, on 13 April 2006 . The event was co-organized by the United Nations University -Office at the United Nations, New York , and UNU-MERIT. The speakers included: Louis-Dominique Ouédraogo, Retiring Inspector, UN Joint Inspection Unit; Tim Hubbard, Head of Human Genome Analysis, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge, UK; Tadao Takahashi, Principal Investigator at Project Foresight ICTs-2015, Centre for Strategic Studies in Brazil; and Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, Senior Researcher, UNU-MERIT.
Participants came from a wide variety of backgrounds, including the private sector, universities, UN agencies and non-governmental organizations, which contributed to an interesting debate. The overall 'consensus' at the end of the session seemed to be that the issues in this debate are more "grey" than a simple "binary code" of rights and wrongs. |
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