Original news and analysis on international IP policy
On 27 March, the United Kingdom introduced new exceptions to its Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 “to make our copyright system better suited to the digital age,” the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) has said.
Today, the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) joined the Geneva Act of the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs. A ceremony was held at the World Intellectual Property Organization, according to a press release by KIPO.
Just like the draft text on the protection of genetic resources last month, a set of draft articles on the protection of traditional knowledge have cleared a hurdle and will be forwarded to the World Intellectual Property Organization General Assembly next autumn.
An alleged leaked analysis by the European Union provides insight into the intellectual property section of the draft Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the United States. And separately, the US International Trade Commission released a report on trade barriers that US small businesses perceive in exporting to Europe.
As bacteria become more and more resistant to existing medicines, product pipelines are drying up. A solution may lie in a forgotten therapy developed in 1917, the use of which has been restricted to certain parts of Eastern Europe ever since the discovery and universal use of antibiotics. But business models and intellectual property regimes need to change to provide incentives for research and development in this area.
World Intellectual Property Organization member states today are trying to agree on the draft text of a potential international instrument to protect traditional knowledge from misappropriation.
Investor-state provisions in trade and investment agreements, which allow private companies to sue governments for policies taken that undermine the companies' investment expectations, have come under recent scrutiny for their potential to undermine the public interest. Today, the United States Trade Representative published a blog post defending these provisions, while the European Union opened a public consultation on the provisions in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the US.
The World Health Organization this week is holding an information consultation with member states on the UN agency's engagement with “non-state actors.” The meeting follows a request by member states at the January WHO Executive Board to pursue discussions on a framework for the organisation's engagement with non-state actors, which has been changing in recent years.
Australia yesterday took the unusual move of agreeing to the first request by Indonesia to establish a World Trade Organization dispute panel against it. The ready acceptance of the panel request was an attempt by Australia to bring the some or all of the five separate cases against its tobacco plain packaging law together for resource reasons and to protect the integrity of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism, it said in a statement to the Dispute Settlement Body.
This morning, the World Intellectual Property Organization committee on traditional knowledge issued a revised set of draft articles of an international instrument aimed at protecting traditional knowledge against misappropriation.
Representatives of indigenous peoples opened a key meeting at the World Intellectual Property Organization with a discussion of the definition of traditional knowledge (TK), the presence of TK in the public domain, and respect for indigenous peoples’ rights under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The World Intellectual Property Organization meeting on traditional knowledge and folklore meeting this week was abruptly adjourned by the chair this afternoon, to reconvene tomorrow morning, with a head-on challenge to governments.