Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Members of the World Health Organization this week have made noncommunicable diseases a top priority, and work on a draft resolution and action plan is being carried out by a drafting group that will report back later in the week.
Members of all political party groups in the European Parliament in a debate in Strasbourg yesterday asked the European Commission to scrap several conditions demanded by the European Union and other Western countries in the World Intellectual Property Organization negotiations for the draft treaty on copyright exceptions for the blind and visually impaired.
The pace to negotiate bilateral or plurilateral free trade agreements has been accelerating rapidly over the last month as the big trading blocs seem eager to position themselves in the race for market access and standards.
China, Japan and Korea in March hurried to open their first official round of negotiations (CJK), just in time to edge ahead of Japan's joining the negotiations of an enlarged Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and also ahead of the official start of a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) announced by the European Union and the United States earlier this year. Meanwhile, a concerned Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) rushed to counter these ventures with their own competitive bid by starting detailed talks on a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in Brunei Daressalam.
The World Intellectual Property Organization training arm has been undergoing an external assessment which was presented to member states during the organisation's committee on development last week.
Infojustice.org reports from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations in Lima, Peru that the intellectual property chapter shows no sign of resolution and the end of the TPP talks in 2013 is now highly unlikely.
World Health Organization Director General Margaret Chan today had strong messages for the opening day of the annual World Health Assembly: in these rocky times, public health work is a high ground that helps bring security and development, and if you are not doing all you can to advance global health for all, then you are part of the problem. She took a swipe at mega-industries – especially tobacco and junk food - that produce and market unhealthy products and spend heavily to work against effective public health policies.
On the eve of the 66th edition of the World Health Assembly, the World Health Editors Network (WHEN) and the Who’s There? Yes (WTY) convened for a conference on their new Journalism and Health Initiative. The conference, entitled, “Enter the stadium, democratise knowledge, bring it home,” focussed on increasing access and awareness of health policy and problems by the general public.
What inventions are eligible for patent protection? That question has roiled the US legal system for the last decade. But the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals (often called the nation’s patent court) was supposedly riding to the rescue. The court’s eagerly-awaited en banc decision in CLS Bank Int’l v. Alice Corp. [pdf] was widely expected to clarify the patentability of computer-related inventions, which play a vital role in the US economy. Unfortunately, instead of clarifying the law, the court’s 10 May ruling increased the confusion, casting doubt on more than 300,000 patents - including one-fifth of all patents issued last year.
After a week which many World Intellectual Property Organization delegates working on development issues found difficult, a degree of consensus appeared in the last hour late on 17 May. Developing countries' requests were substantially scaled down as discussions on several areas threatened to be bogged down indefinitely.
On the agenda of the normally technical World Intellectual Property Organization working group on the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) next week is a proposal for an amendment that would incorporate the bilateral Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) used by some countries into the PCT. This has stirred concern among countries that are currently outside the PPH system.
The World Intellectual Property Organization is involved in activities aimed at facilitating technology transfer for green technologies, and research and development for neglected diseases, malaria and tuberculosis. At the request of member states, WIPO's Global Challenges Division gave a briefing this week on those activities.
With just days before the UN World Health Assembly opens, member states once again face a packed agenda with key decisions to be taken on some highly-politicised public health and intellectual property matters, including how to move forward on the research and development draft resolution. The spotlight will also be on pandemic influenza preparedness, a resolution of size on noncommunicable diseases, the health-related Millennium Development Goals, and putting some reform decisions into practice.