This is the WWW site of the thematic Working Group (WG) dealing with Patents,Copyrights, Trademarks (P.C.T) and related issues, within the framework of the Civil Society contribution to the World Summit On the Information Society (WSIS) organized by the United Nations.

The term "Intellectual Property Rights" has been avoided purposedly, as explained in our IPR disclaimer page .

We are going first to try to explain what is the WSIS for all practical purposes. The WSIS process is not easy to grasp unless you have been at PrepCom2, or you are a seasonned UN diplomat. Then, we are going to informally present the various Civil Society WGs, and this specific PCT WG.

This WWW site has been set up for coordination purposes. Only official documents at official WSIS sites have legal values. Depending on the context, we offer both framed links (in blue) and hyperlinks that open new windows (in red). Sometimes both types of links are available for convenience. In order to offer a multilingual environment, the reader may use two machine translation tools. One tool (top of each page), by Google, is relatively fast and provides a translated page that stays in the overall frame of this site. The other tool (bottom of each page), by AltaVista, features three more languages : Chinese,Japanese and Korean, but it is a little slower and provides a translated page in a new window (More about this site features).

It is not always easy to find information in the WSIS sites. Therefore some links are provided for documentation purpose. A list of links to a few advocacy groups is also provided. This does not imply that those advocacy groups are represented at WSIS, and that we endorse their views. Some related news are also listed.