SCCR 35 opened on a windy but bright Monday morning at the WIPO offices in Geneva, Switzerland. In his introductory speech, WIPO Director-General Francis Gurry addressed the importance of multilateralism in a time when politicians’ perspectives are increasingly shifting from the international arena to a predominantly national orientation.
New SCCR President Daren Tang began the meeting as usual with a call for opening statement, but had communicated with the various Member States beforehand to keep their remarks to a minimum. As it had for all the recent SCCR meetings, the first agenda item for the week was a session working towards a treaty for the protection of broadcasting organizations. International rules to protect television broadcasts from piracy have not been updated since the 1961 Rome Treaty. Most representatives of members States have agreed for some time that a new treaty would be desirable.
In the afternoon, the Member States convened what are called ‘informals.’ This entails leaving the open plenary session in the main hall and meeting elsewhere to discuss ways forward and text changes among themselves. NGOs and other observers in attendance are allowed to listen to these informals, but prohibited from reporting on the matters discussed. We hope that tomorrow the morning plenary session will allow us to report on any progress in more detail.
The IPA contingent present this week is the largest in living memory. Apart from the usual team of IPA CEO José Borghino, and legal advisers André Myburgh and Ted Shapiro, also attending are IPA President Michiel Kolman, Vice-President Hugo Setzer as well FEP President Henrique Mota, FEP Director Anne Bergman-Tahon, (UK) PA CEO Stephen Lotinga, (UK) PA General Counsel William Bowes, and EC member Rudy Vanschoonbeek. Further representing the IPA will be Chiefs of Staff Rachel Martin and Sjors de Heuvel from Elsevier. All of us will be engaged in individual meetings with ambassadors and country delegations, which means we have a busy but exciting week ahead of us.