Geneva Declaration on the Future of the World Intellectual Property Organization

Humanity faces a global crisis in the governance of knowledge, technology and culture. The crisis is manifest in many ways.

• Without access to essential medicines, millions suffer and die;
  
• Morally repugnant inequality of access to education, knowledge and technology undermines development and social cohesion;
  
• Anticompetitive practices in the knowledge economy impose enormous costs on consumers and retard innovation;
  
• Authors, artists and inventors face mounting barriers to follow-on innovation;
  
• Concentrated ownership and control of knowledge, technology, biological resources and culture harm development, diversity and democratic institutions;
  
• Technological measures designed to enforce intellectual property rights in digital environments threaten core exceptions in copyright laws for disabled persons, libraries, educators, authors and consumers, and undermine privacy and freedom;
  
• Key mechanisms to compensate and support creative individuals and communities are unfair to both creative persons and consumers;
  
• Private interests misappropriate social and public goods, and lock up the public domain.

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Geneva Declaration on the Future of the World Intellectual Property Organization