It’s no secret that American sanctions against Iran aren’t bulletproof (just ask all the iPhone vendors in Tehran). So yes, there are United Nations sanctions prohibiting sales of certain material to the Islamic Republic, but surprise—some other stuff is getting through.

Bloomberg now reports the US is looking into the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization’s activities in Iran. Apparently, the WIPO has sent a “shipment of information-technology equipment to Iran that was received by August 2010.” The news agency cited confidential documents that it had seen, provided by a WIPO employee who was not authorized to disclose them.

For years, WIPO has been under mandate to help developing countries modernize their patent systems. The organization has been sending computer gear to other countries, most notably North Korea.

Earlier this year, WIPO attempted to give computers to North Korea as a way to help it better enforce intellectual property regimes. That gear included printers, computers, servers, and firewall hardware, among other devices.

As TechDirt aptly put it at the time: “Of course, as plenty of people outside the IP-maximalist bubble realize, North Korea doesn't give a damn about foreign patent and trademark applications. The country is actually well-known for being a key source of counterfeiting.”

In the case of Iran, though, legal scholars seem to be a bit mystified as to how one UN agency, WIPO, seems to be brazenly disobeying its own international sanctions.

“This is politically very embarrassing,” Matthew Parish, a lawyer with Holman Fenwick Willan LLP in Geneva, told Bloomberg. “Businesses and other international organizations are increasingly avoiding all contact with Iran, and it seems astonishing that WIPO does not feel obliged to follow the same principles.”