Harnessing the power of the private sector - An interview with Francis Gurry

There is strong interest in public-private partnerships at the moment. Why is that?

We have seen a general trend over the past 25 years towards the privatization of public functions and utilities, which means the size of the private sector has grown. On top of this, spare capital in the public sector has dried up as governments grapple with austerity measures following the global financial crisis. Today we see that spare capital now lies mainly in private sector hands. For example, in 2012, the budget for the United Nations (UN) system as a whole amounted to USD40 billion. In the same year, private giving in the United States alone amounted to some USD320 billion. It is therefore desirable to find a way to harness some of that capital to fund public programs.

Public-private partnerships can be very effective vehicles for implementing policies agreed by our member states. For example, the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired of Otherwise Print Disabled seeks to address the famine in accessible-format books by establishing the legal framework for such works to move more freely around the world. But while the Treaty creates the possibility of cross border exchange of these books, it does not actually move them. To help make that happen – in line with the agreed policy objective of WIPO member states – we formed a public-private partnership, namely the Accessible Books Consortium (ABC), which in fact evolved from the WIPO Stakeholders’ Platform established by member states in 2009.

How are WIPO’s public-private partnerships managed?

I want to underline that that public-private partnerships are not a vehicle for establishing intellectual property (IP) laws or policies. WIPO’s normative program remains the prerogative of member states, and member states alone. It is a purely public function.

Public-private partnership initiatives at WIPO are carefully managed in line with the Organizations principles of good governance. They feature in our Program and Budget proposals, which are reviewed and adopted by member states, and like any other program activity, they are subject to rigorous oversight, audit and reporting requirements.

They must also have a practical mechanism, a committee or a board made up of stakeholder representatives, to guide the operations of the partnership.

Can you describe examples of WIPO’s successful involvement in public-private partnerships?

WIPO Re:Search and the Accessible Books Consortium (ABC) are two of our most prominent public-private partnerships.

The very successful WIPO Re:Search partnership was established, broadly speaking, to address the acceleration of drug discovery for neglected tropical diseases, malaria and tuberculosis. It is not concerned with the delivery of health services, but is very much upstream in the research, development and commercialization spectrum.

WIPO Re:Search enables participants to share their IP assets among themselves to advance research into neglected tropical diseases , malaria and...