WIPO's Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP) adopted the recommendations at its second meeting this year, which was held in Geneva from July 7 to 11.
The remaining 26 of the 45 recommendations agreed by member states last year are considered more complicated and their implementation will be discussed at the Committee's third session scheduled for next year.
Francis Gurry, who has been nominated as the next director-general and is expected to take over from Kamil Idris in October, addressed the Committee and emphasized his commitment to the implementation of the Agenda.
He said that the "development dimension must be taken into account horizontally across the Organization" and the Agenda would help "narrow the knowledge gap and digital divide" that exists between developed and developing countries.
The 19 recommendations span all six of the proposed clusters: technical assistance and capacity building; norm-setting, flexibilities, public policy and public knowledge; technology transfer, information and communication technology and access to knowledge; assessments, evaluation and impact studies; institutional matters including mandate and governance; and other issues.
Some of the 19 recommendations are: to promote a development-oriented IP culture and generate greater public awareness about IP; to introduce IP at different academic levels, a special WIPO strategy for SMEs; and strategies to enhance access to and use of patent databases.
The Committee also noted that there is a need to coordinate the CDIP's activities with other WIPO bodies and decided to begin discussions on a mechanism to monitor and assess such coordination at its next session.
Trevor Clarke, the ambassador of Barbados, chaired the session and prepared a summary report of the first four days of the meeting. An official summary report will be prepared by the secretariat and will be sent to the WIPO General Assembly for approval and to those present at the meeting.
The Agenda originated when Brazil and Argentina introduced a proposal at the WIPO General Assembly in September 2004.
They argued that the Organization needed to do more to take the interests of developing and the least-developed countries into account to counter-balance efforts by many rich countries - and most IP owners - who wanted it to focus on harmonizing rules to make obtaining and enforcing IP rights easier and cheaper for users.
The proposal received formal support from Bolivia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Iran, Kenya, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania and Venezuela.
Differences between developed and developing countries then emerged over the proposed content of any Development Agenda and it was only at the General Assembly last year that the CDIP was established and a mandate to implement the recommendations was given.
The first meeting of the CDIP was held in March this year where representatives discussed five of the 45 recommendations for change formulated by WIPO member states in October last year. But no decisions were made about implementation at that meeting.
Last week's meeting was attended by representatives of 101 member states, eight inter-governmental organizations and 37 non-governmental organizations.
