Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) this week urged the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) “to make the protection of creative content online a core and guiding principle" of its new National Broadband Plan. But its view suggests it would support stronger regulation over the internet, an approach it has strongly opposed in other areas.
Access to medicine and preservation of biodiversity topped the agenda at the World Trade Organization Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Council meeting this week, as a new alleged drug seizure in France, a concern over a largely-unused amendment to TRIPS intended to help developing countries gain access to medicine, and a renewed mandate on biodiversity at the World Intellectual Property Organization influenced the issues on the table.
Betty Eileen King of New York has been nominated next United States permanent representative to the United Nations and other international organisations in Geneva, an ambassador-level posting, the US Mission announced. The nomination has been sent to the US Senate…
The United States Chamber of Commerce industry group has issued a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice against a ‘parody’ website that mocked the Chamber, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Earlier this week, a fake press briefing purportedly from…
Protection of traditional knowledge under intellectual property rights may have a time limit, though determining duration of protection measures will be more difficult than it is with Western scientific innovation, World Intellectual Property Organization Director General Francis Gurry said yesterday.
World Health Organization members this week offered views on the global system for virus- and benefit-sharing for pandemic influenza following recently proposed solutions by Director General Margaret Chan aimed at changing the current, ad-hoc model to a more predictable, sustainably-funded system.
Can a patent-holder ask for royalties from third-party purchasers? The United States Supreme Court said ‘no’ in the 2008 landmark case Quanta Computer Inc. v. LG Electronics Inc. (IPW, US Policy, 25 June 2008). But what does this decision mean…
Director General Pascal Lamy of the World Trade Organization reported today to member states on his most recent consultations on outstanding issues of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). He was speaking in his capacity as…
A pilot project intended to counter the challenge of counterfeit medicines entering the legitimate supply chain has been launched this week in Sweden by the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations. The project involves individually identifying packs of medicine…
BANGKOK - Normal negotiation strategy is unlikely to result in an impact on climate change, since the most important stakeholders in fighting it - not yet born - have no seat at the negotiating tables, said a panel last week in Bangkok. An ethical approach is a better way to achieve results, speakers said, and an ethical take on intellectual property rights and alternative forms of innovation may have a place in new climate-friendly economic models.
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In the weeks leading up to the next negotiating session (first week of November in Seoul) of the secretive Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, 42 Washington, DC-area insiders, mostly from industry, were invited by the United States Trade Representatives to see copies…