Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The smartphone is one of the most ubiquitous inventions in contemporary life. Ask anyone from teenagers to senior citizens – in industrialized countries, as well as emerging markets – about the wireless ways of their life, and they will tell you this. But what is the economic impact of mobile? That is not as obvious, writes Antonio Varas.
One of the major imminent changes in the international patent system is the establishment of the Unified Patent Court. The agreement to create this tribunal was signed by 25 European Union States in 2013, and it is foreseen that the Court will be operational by the end of 2016. Setting up of a single tribunal with competence to decide on both validity and infringement disputes is an old European aspiration, and must be seen in the context of the global trend of creating specialized intellectual property tribunals. In this case, the aim is to respond to the high costs, forum shopping and lack of legal certainty that are generally attributed to the current system of adjudicating disputes concerning European patents. Among the many new features of the Court, the presence of technical judges is particularly notable.
It is a healthy trend that the awareness on GI is on the rise in India. However, the misuse of GI legislation also is rampant. Recent past has witnessed many instances of inappropriate GI Registrations, writes Praveen Raj.
A conference involving European governments and industry on how to comply with the new European Union rules on access and benefit sharing, organised by the International Chamber of Commerce and sponsored by the agriculture industry, is taking place this week in Paris. Seemingly contrary to the subject of access and sharing, the event is closed to the public and media.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, to be adopted this week at UN Headquarters, could fall short of its health targets unless the governments embark on “U-turn” changes to rectify the dysfunctions in global governance that undermine health, writes Daniele Dionisio.
After 54 years, the American flag has once again been raised over the American Embassy in Cuba. What does the newfound activity in Cuba mean for your brand? Is it time to protect your trademark in Cuba? The answer from most is a hearty “yes,” writes Pam Huff.
The Federal Circuit will soon hear Lexmark v. Impression Products, a case about ink cartridges. Impression, a foreign buyer, refills spent Lexmark cartridges and resells them in the United States. Impression claims that Lexmark, having sold the cartridges, has exhausted its patent rights, and cannot hold Impression liable for patent infringement. The Federal Circuit will address whether the US patent is exhausted with the sale of the patented product outside the US, write Burcu Kilic and Peter Maybarduk.
From the Centre for International Intellectual Property Studies (CEIPI), University of Strasbourg: On 5 September 2015, the European Copyright Society issued an Opinion on the conclusions presented on June 11, 2015 by the Advocate-General Pedro Cruz Villalón in the HP Belgium v. Reprobel-case pending before the Court of Justice of the EU (case C-572/13), following a request for preliminary ruling from the Brussels Court of Appeal (Belgium) lodged on 8 November 2013.
In 2011 in a small court in Ecuador’s Amazon jungle, a judge ordered the American oil giant Chevron to pay US$9 billion dollars in damages for pollution in the region that was caused by drilling activities in the 1970s and 1980s. The company quickly denounced landmark ruling as illegitimate. More than a year before the final ruling had been issued, Chevron had already taken steps to initiate an investor-state dispute against the Government of Ecuador under the terms of a US-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty (BIT). The company seeks to avoid paying the US$9 billion by convincing an international tribunal that the courts of Ecuador are corrupt and that the government is ultimately responsible for any environmental damage and associated health issues experienced by local residents, writes Kyla Tienhaara in Green Agenda.
Since the debut of Candid Camera in the late 1940s, unscripted television of varying genres (from game shows to documentaries) has been a staple of American television. Not until the worldwide success of shows such as Survivor, however, did the genre, and in particular the staged competition variety of unscripted “reality” television, become a dominant source of programming in the US market. Reality television often takes on a familiar pattern – as the season progresses contestants are eliminated by audience and “expert” votes leaving one person or couple to win the grand prize. The myriad ways in which to package this formula has no limits, and in light of the success of such shows, a vast number of people are creating and pitching what they believe to be both original and the next Survivor. And that leads to lawsuits.
We should be careful in creating registrable rights on the traditional knowledge (TK) including traditional medicine practices and classifying TK under intellectual property rights, which are private exclusive rights operating like a monopoly in practice. Patents create private spaces in the knowledge arena (though for a short duration), and therefore no private appropriation should be allowed in the realm of TK, writes R.S. Praveen Raj.
The negotiating process to achieve post-2015 development goals has clarified the agenda that governments ought to follow until 2030. Unfortunately, due to vague terms and the lack of unequivocal definitions, a number of relevant issues still lie in uncertainty, writes Pietro Dionisio