Original news and analysis on international IP policy
ISTANBUL - The Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow in the end somehow reconnected the 9th Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and the new Internet Ungovernance Forum held in Istanbul last week. The nearly decade-old UN-led IGF initiative is facing profound new challenges as the global split widens over the future of the internet.
Applicants to the European “Innovation Communities” initiative have until 10 September to submit joint innovation proposals in the areas of healthy aging and raw materials. The aim is to create new organisations compliant with the European grant programme Horizon 2020, which will operate under flexible intellectual property rights’ policies in collaborative innovation projects.
The world and the global health community have been taken by surprise by the worst outbreak of Ebola so far. The World Health Organization today (5 September) said a vaccine could be available in November 2014 if proven safe. So far, according to the WHO, intellectual property issues have not acted as a barrier to accessing potential treatments and vaccines, and the focus for now is on emergency measures to find health solutions.
Will India’s new government bring in radical changes in the country’s intellectual property rights regime? That question has generated enormous buzz but no definitive answer ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to power with a decisive mandate in May this year.
[Update: the Indian government has announced that it has begun a process for a comprehensive IPR policy over the next six months, including a government think tank. See report here. The government website is here.]
The World Intellectual Property Organization Program and Budget Committee is meeting this week to scrutinise the UN agency’s inner workings. At the meeting, the director general’s report on programme performance gave member countries the occasion to comment on WIPO’s various…
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The World Health Organization this week is holding a consultation on potential Ebola therapies and vaccines.
World Intellectual Property Organization member governments are hard at work this week trying to improve auditing and oversight of the UN agency, coming after a successful year financially but a year of questions about governance and transparency. Proposed changes include a number of measures on conflicts of interest and investigations even at the highest levels of the organization.
In a longstanding World Trade Organization dispute about measures affecting the cross-border supply of gambling and betting services, Antigua and Barbuda has made a new proposal to the United States on a way to solve the issue of the US not complying with a WTO ruling it lost. And in a separate matter at the same WTO meeting last week, Cuba referred to the US failure to change a law barring a rum trademark in the context of railing against US policy of "economic suffocation" of the island nation.
A report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the right to privacy in the digital age has been lauded by a group of civil society organisations who also called states to curtail mass surveillance and for the ITU constitution to be amended.
The US IP industry is applauding the nomination of trademark attorney Daniel Marti to be the next US Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator.
Biosimilar medicines might prove to be a new reservoir for innovation for the pharmaceutical industry. However, the complexity of their manufacture needs a stringent regulatory framework, according to the industry.