The World Intellectual Property Organization and the sustainable development agenda

The UN’s Agenda for Sustainable Development is being taken up throughout the international system, including at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). This article examines WIPO’s approach to the sustainable development agenda in light of its past approaches to development. In the first part of this article, I outline some of the longstanding major critiques of the discourse of sustainability, noting that these critiques anticipated the current lamentable status of a sustainable development agenda for WIPO. Next, I discuss the history of development agendas at WIPO in the context of WIPO’s history and role at the centre of the global intellectual property system. I then ask what role intellectual property has to play in the SDGs. I conclude by suggesting that an adequate agenda for sustainable development is unlikely to be developed at WIPO and must, rather, come from outside.