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15 candidates compete for WIPO DG role

Eklavya Gupte, London

Fifteen candidates have been nominated to stand for the post of the new director-general for WIPO. Six nominations were received by the Organization yesterday, while three applications were finalized today

The names are a mixture of senior WIPO staff, ambassadors and permanent representatives of member states along with directors of their country's patent offices.

The nominations received were Masood Khan, permanent representative to the Permanent Mission of Pakistan to Geneva; Australia's Francis Gurry, deputy director-general of WIPO; Toufiq Ali, permanent representative of the Permanent Mission of Bangladesh in Geneva; Jorge Amigo Castañeda, director-general of the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property; Mauro Masi, delegate for IP in Italy; Boris Simonov, director-general of the Federal Service for Intellectual Property of the Russian Federation and Gjorgji Filipov, Ambassador of the Republic of Macedonia in Germany; and Bojan Pretnar of Slovenia, who is the deputy director of policy planning and development at WIPO.

The leading contenders include Francis Gurry from Australia, who is the deputy director-general. He holds law degrees from the University of Melbourne and a doctorate of philosophy from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He is also a vice president of the International Federation of Commercial Arbitration Institutions (IFCAI).

He joined the Organization in 1985, has practised as an attorney in Melbourne and Sydney and also taught law at the University of Melbourne and has written books on the law of trade secrets and confidential information and intellectual property.

Another strong candidate is Mauro Masi who is the Italian delegate for intellectual property, and represents the Italian government at the Board of Governors of the European Patent Office (EPO).

Masi is a well-known academic in Europe and was the head of Società Italiana Autori ed Editori-SIAE (the Italian collecting Society) and his expertise includes copyright-related issues.

The WIPO Coordination Committee will meet on May 13 and 14 for an extraordinary session and by the end of it Kamil Idris's successor will be nominated. He/she will officially take over at this year's General Assembly at the end of September.

The final list of contenders is: Alicja Adamczak from Poland; Toufiq Ali from Bangladesh; José Graça-Aranha from Brazil; Jorge Amigo Castañeda from Mexico; Francis Gurry from Australia; Masood Khan from Pakistan; Enrique Manalo from the Philippines; Mauro Masi from Italy; James Otieno-Odek from Kenya; José Delmer Urbizo Panting from Honduras; Philippe Petit from France; Gjorgji Filipov from Macedonia; Bojan Pretnar from Slovenia; Boris Simonov from Russia and Yoshiyuki Takagi from Japan.