Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The global patent system is intended to promote innovation and increase growth, but this might not always be the case, as it might only serve industries relying heavily on patents in advanced economies, according to a study on patents and manufacturing industries presented at the World Intellectual Property Organization this week.
Today in Cancun, Mexico, the United Nations climate change conference opened with hopes of finding consensual solutions for the global environmental threat and its consequences. After the disappointing results of last year’s conference in Copenhagen, echoes of uncertainty on the outcome of the Cancun conference are being heard from many sides.
As the end of 2010 nears, bringing with it the end of the otherwise unremarkable international year of biodiversity, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity is calling for countries to ratify the newly agreed protocol on biodiversity access and benefit sharing as soon as it opens for signature in February.
As the first flurries of snow gave Geneva a foretaste of winter, delegates yesterday ended a week of negotiations in the World Intellectual Property Organization committee overseeing implementation of the WIPO Development Agenda. They agreed on some projects and postponed discussions on others until the next session, but remained frozen without agreement on details of the coordination mechanism for Agenda implementation. Numerous corridor discussions and informal meetings did not help the process.
A better definition of the public domain is needed, but copyright and public domain are not antagonistic, said a study commissioned by the World Intellectual Property Organization presented this week. Also this week, a book on the role of copyright in access to knowledge in Africa was launched.
Member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization this week are working through details of projects related to boosting the UN agency’s development orientation. But simultaneous closed, informal meetings on a mechanism for coordinating WIPO Development Agenda activities have proven more difficult, as developed countries try to contain the spread of the development committee’s influence – and work through their own differences, according to sources.
Members of the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization this week are in discussions on how to ensure that WIPO activities are development-oriented. A particular focus will be the implementation of a Development Agenda coordination mechanism approved at the last session in May. Also new on the table this week is an agenda item on development-related issues and a proposal for a new project on cooperation between developing countries.
World Intellectual Property Organization members this week took early steps toward the possibility of a treaty to facilitate the registration of industrial designs, and urged WIPO to continue addressing potential new challenges to trademarks from the impending expansion of domain names on the internet.
In a police-secured, airless room full of Geneva journalists, Julian Assange, creator and director of Wikileaks, today gave details of what he described as United States abuse of human rights in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as an alleged muzzling of US press on those subjects. The United States will undergo its first Universal Periodic Review of the Human Rights Council tomorrow.
With a standing ovation in the early hours of the morning of Saturday, in Nagoya, Japan, an international instrument aimed at preventing misappropriation of genetic resources was adopted by members of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. The protocol is also intended to ensure that benefits accrued from the use of those genetic resources are shared equitably with the provider country.
European proponents of geographical indications have granted an award to a Hawaiian coffee lacking GI protection as a sign of solidarity with the producers, they said. Europe is a prominent actor in this type of intellectual property right on products linked to a specific regions, and the French government along with a GI lobby group last week held an informational event geared towards Africa.
Today the negotiating group on a protocol aimed at stopping biopiracy and rewarding countries providing genetic resources had to admit, hours from the end of the high-level meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), that it has not reached an agreement on the draft text. The president of the convention gave them one more deadline of midnight in Nagoya, Japan, before ministers gather for the last time tomorrow.