Original news and analysis on international IP policy
PARIS – Récemment adopté, l’accord international pour faciliter l’accès aux ressources génétiques et le partage équitable des ressources en découlant a été ouvert à la ratification la semaine dernière. Le texte a d’ores et déjà reçu des commentaires mitigés des parties prenantes.
Patents and public health are sometimes seen as a mismatch, but three prominent international organisations today stepped up their collaboration on ways to facilitate access to medicines by making a better use of the patent system. Effective, reliable and transparent information on patents is necessary to help decision-makers take the best public health approaches for global health coverage, panellists said.
The appointment of former United States Register of Copyrights to the board of directors of the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) was announced yesterday.
The European Parliament today approved a new law aimed at preventing falsified medicines from entering the legal supply chain, according to a Parliament press release. The law needs to be formally approved by the Council of Ministers.
The head of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Global Health Program intends to retire from his position in June, according to a press release. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s leading international advocate for intellectual property rights has joined the Gates Foundation Global…
The international protection of wines and spirits named after geographical locations has seen renewed attention at the World Trade Organization since the beginning of the year as part of a push to conclude the Doha Round of trade liberalisation. Legal effects and costs of a register for such wines and spirits were addressed last week.
The non-profit ETC Group has released a report on global governance of nanoscale technologies that showed that thousands of patents are being granted on this still little understood area of science.
Determining the value of patented inventions is akin to a guessing game, said a speaker at the World Intellectual Property Organization yesterday. Companies should try to spread their patents over related technological innovations rather focusing on one patent, hoping it will be “the philosopher’s stone”.
The storm appears to be subsiding for international patent filings as 2010 showed a cautious recovery in growth, the head of the World Intellectual Property Organization said today. After the first-ever drop in applications in 2009, 2010 filings almost returned to their 2008 level. And China holds pole position in growth numbers.
PARIS - The recently agreed international instrument to facilitate access to genetic resources and the equitable sharing of benefits accrued from those resources opened for signature last week, and the text is already getting mixed reviews from stakeholders.