The capacity of the Congolese group is basically their design capacity. Their production to now has been by hand in small lots. If they obtain a large order they would need assistance to arrange for production to be handled by third parties and to ensure that they were compensated for their design elements. With a view to the long run, such an order might be a step toward building a market awareness of their design style and thus lead to further earnings from design.

The first lesson one can draw from Layton’s study is that people familiar with knowledge-based industries see considerable potential in poor people’s knowledge. A second lesson is that IP is a commercial as well as a legal skill. Having the appropriate laws and police in place is insufficient. Artisans not familiar with the use of _commercial_ tools, such as brand names, trademarks, and copyrights, to manage the knowledge value of their product often find their successful products copied by large-scale producers who can make a living simply from the commodity value. However, command of the commercial skills to collect the value of their knowledge embedded in their products is within reach of the Congolese, and it will make a difference.

This and other cases summarized here illustrate the important role of good intentions. The fair trade organizations are market-accepting organizations; they accept that over the longer term commercial viability is necessary. At the same time they allocate returns beyond their costs to developing country suppliers, even when these suppliers do not have the market power or the market knowledge to command these returns in the marketplace. The fair trade organizations aim to provide a transition from artistry to commercial viability, and the effect will be to build a successful business community in the supplying country.

Frank J. Penna, Monique Thormann, J. Michael Finger (2004): _The Africa Music Project_ African music has significant business potential. It currently makes up about half of the fast-growing “world music” segment of recorded music, and music industry experts suggest that African music today may be at the jumping-off point where country music and rock and roll were in the United States in the 1950s.

Paul Collier, Director of the World Bank’s Development Research Group, at the initiation of an investigation of this potential, pointed to an important psychological element. To maintain its own resolve to push forward and to prevent its more dynamic young people from going off to Europe or America, Africa has to see itself as succeeding in activities that have some glamour. The music industry has the potential to be an important symbol as well as a substantive element in bringing a poor society forward.

The scheme to support development of the music industry in Africa actually stems from the Bank’s work to help developing countries make more effective use of the WTO. Spurred by increasing concern that WTO obligations on IP, standards, and other behindthe-border parts of economic regulation were not consistent with good development policy, a small group set out to find “real development projects” that would involve these policy areas.

The immediate objective of the work was project design, to help African musicians identify problems and bottlenecks and to prepare plans and proposals for investments, policy and legal reform, and so forth, to take on these problems. This information would provide lessons on the usefulness of the WTO obligation on IP to generate increased 10