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LINKING PEOPLE, JOINING NATIONS
With the agreements with ISQ and EWF coming to a close, preliminary discussions
regarding the IIW IAB and the respective authority of its officers were undertaken at the
first meeting of the Task Group
Governance
(TG-GOV) in 2008. This was appropriate
since TG-GOV had been formed to improve the operational clarity of how IIW carried out
its affairs and the licence agreement between IIW and EWF was an important process by
which both organisations would work closely together. At this meeting it was stated that
ISQ had managed the work for both EWF and IIW within the framework of the existing
contract between ISQ/IIW and EWF.
32
A new contract, therefore, was required to be
negotiated before the end of 2009. A further meeting was held between IIW and EWF
representatives at TWI in Cambridge, UK in December 2008. It was agreed that, since EWF
owned and maintained the copyright of the operating documents, then the right for IIW to
use this documentation was still conditional on a new licencing agreement between the two
organisations to replace all previous agreements.
At the meeting of the Board of Directors in January 2009 the licence
agreement between IIW and EWF was discussed. It was then recommended
by the Board that a new licence agreement be prepared between IIW and
EWF and that a Secretariat contract be also prepared between IIW, ISQ and
EWF. Certain points of this draft licence agreement were discussed at a later
meeting of TG-GOV in Singapore on 14 July 2009 including the end date at
which point both EWF and IIW would be free to use the documents.
33
At the
Board of Directors meeting two days earlier, the IIW President Prof. Dr-Ing.
Ulrich Dilthey (Germany) had proposed that the terms of the draft licence be
agreed upon and that any comments be submitted by email since the dateline
for signature was the end of the year 2009.
34
The licence agreement between IIW and EWF was actually signed just before this
deadline on the 24 November 2009 by Dilthey for IIW and Jessop for EWF. IIWwas granted
non-exclusive rights within Europe and exclusive rights elsewhere, to market, use and offer
for sale, EWF intellectual property over a 20-year period. This period commenced from the
end date of the original agreement which had been signed with EWF on 1 January 1999.
At the 2010 Annual Assembly in Istanbul, Turkey, two months later, concern was voiced
by certain members of IIW regarding the licence agreement.
35
After these concerns were
addressed the Board of Directors then confirmed the licence agreement with EWF. Included
in the licence agreement was the payment of royalties to EWF for a fixed period of time.
This, interestingly, was an issue much debated prior to the signing of the original licence
agreement with EWF when royalties were not included.
The IIW Board of Directors then saw a rejuvenation of C-XIV as a key Working
Unit instrumental in the accomplishment of the goal ‘to identify, develop and implement