Catherine Saez

Catherine Saez

WIPO Panel: Rights Management Information At Core Of IP Protection

By Catherine Saez
The growing volume of audiovisual, musical or text-based content online offers opportunities and challenges to copyright owners, intermediaries such as search engines, and users, according to panellists at a recent World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) seminar. Among the challenges are the ownership, licensing and management of intellectual property.

Rights Management Information (RMI), as defined in the 1996 WIPO "Internet" treaties, identifies content protected by copyright or related rights, the rights owners for such content and the terms and conditions of use associated with it. RMI is playing an essential role in protecting copyrights in the network environment, according to panellists, most of whom were from an industry perspective.

IP And Bioethics: International Community Seeking Answers

By Catherine Saez
In order to explore the relationship between intellectual property rights and life science innovations, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is organising policy symposia to identify and clarify the intellectual property dimension in the life sciences.

In a world where biotechnology is booming and new technological frontiers are being crossed, new challenges arise such as ethical questions relating to the implication and applications of biological research. Patent agencies, industry and civil society were invited on 4 September to share their thoughts and experience on the use of the intellectual property system in bioethics.

As Antony Taubman, acting director of the WIPO Global IP Issues Division described it, biotechnology is based on living organisms which raises distinct ethical questions.