Original news and analysis on international IP policy
A seemingly overworked and impoverished World Health Organization opened its Executive Board session today with calls for reform amid deep concerns about its financial future. Meanwhile, dissension arose over an industry representative named by the WHO secretariat to a new research and development funding working group, sparking the WHO director general to cast doubt on the role of industry in such groups.
A decision by the Indian Patent Office to reject a patent on an AIDS drug last week has drawn acclaim from civil society and Indian generic pharmaceutical industries. The decision was not based on a controversial article of Indian law aimed at preventing patent extensions but rather on the grounds of non-inventiveness. Abbott Laboratories, meanwhile, presented Intellectual Property Watch with justification for its Indian patent request.
At Intellectual Property Watch, a list of the top 25 posts of 2010 reveals your - our readers’ - top interests and tells the tale of the past year. It also is a reminder that quality reporting needs support. Please subscribe to IP-Watch via our website, or contact the director at wnew@ip-watch.ch.
Strategies may be failing to ensure developing countries’ implementation of global trade rules for intellectual property protection does not squelch access to affordable medicines worldwide, according to a study presented this week.
The United Nations climate change conference closed at dawn last Saturday, with a make-do package of decisions advantageously labelled the “Cancun Agreements”. Intellectual property rights have all but disappeared from the texts as Bolivia stood alone in disagreement and was shush-gavelled.
In what may be the first legal reference to newly adopted international rules on sharing the benefits of and access to genetic resources, non-governmental groups have sent letters to top European health officials reminding them of these obligations in the context of influenza viruses and access to vaccines - a topic under debate this week at the World Health Organization.
World Trade Organization members last week agreed to work on a draft text for an international register of geographical indications for wines and spirits by April 2011. Meanwhile, the European Commission took steps last week to raise GI protection within the region.
As delegates in Cancun, Mexico, neared the end of their search this week for consensus on how to stop climate change, intellectual property issues were being set aside for later.
The European Patent Office Enlarged Board of Appeal yesterday gave its decision on the so-called “broccoli” and “tomato” cases, and excluded “essentially biological processes for the production of plans (or animals)” from patentability.
Global talks to address climate change being held in Cancun hobbled along last week amid calls for flexibility among parties. Japan declared its opposition to an extension of the Kyoto Protocol setting binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, civil society worried about transparency in the negotiating process, as countries started negotiations on specific texts.