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Examples of Mainly Corporate Funded Think Tanks: Cato Institute

Founded in 1977 the Cato Institutes 1998 budget made up US$ 11 million. Its funding consists of corporate and private donations (especially from corporations and executives in the highly regulated industries of financial services, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals industries) and sales of publications.

Catos corporate donors include tobacco firms:

Philip Morris (

Rupert Murdoch sits on Philip Morris board of directors) and

R.J. Reynolds. Financial firms:

American Express,

Chase Manhattan Bank,

Chemical Bank,

Citicorp/Citibank, Commonwealth Fund, Prudential Securities and

Salomon Brothers. Energy conglomerates:

Chevron Companies,

Exxon Company,

Shell Oil Company and Tenneco Gas, as well as the

American Petroleum Institute,

Amoco Foundation and

Atlantic Richfield Foundation. Furthermore the Cato Institute is funded by pharmaceutical firms:

Eli Lilly & Company,

Merck & Company and

Pfizer, Inc., foundations, like Koch, Lambe and Sarah Scaife and companies from the telecommunications sector: Bell Atlantic Network Services, BellSouth Corporation,

Microsoft, NYNEX Corporation,

Sun Microsystems and

Viacom.

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WIPO

The World Intellectual Property Organization is one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations (UN), which was designed to promote the worldwide protection of both industrial property (inventions, trademarks, and designs) and copyrighted materials (literary, musical, photographic, and other artistic works). It was established by a convention signed in Stockholm in 1967 and came into force in 1970. The aims of WIPO are threefold. Through international cooperation, WIPO promotes the protection of intellectual property. Secondly, the organization supervises administrative cooperation between the Paris, Berne, and other intellectual unions regarding agreements on trademarks, patents, and the protection of artistic and literary work and thirdly through its registration activities the WIPO provides direct services to applicants for, or owners of, industrial property rights.

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