Five hundred scientists, academics, legal experts and consumer advocates, including two Nobel laureates, called yesterday for a change of course at the World Intellectual Property Organisation to put development concerns ahead of stronger intellectual property rights.

The signatories of the so-called Geneva declaration on the future of Wipo include Sir John Sulston, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize for medicine, and Burton Richter, the 1976 physics laureate. The declaration also has the support of development groups such as Oxfam and ActionAid.