Original news and analysis on international IP policy
By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch RIO DE JANEIRO – The debate over whether the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) should grow beyond its no-decisions, dialogue-only capacity was under consideration from the opening of the meeting here Monday. While a…
By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch Intellectual property and computer law barrister Peter Dengate-Thrush has been elected as new Chairman of the Board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The former chairman of InternetNZ, the…
By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch The upcoming second Internet Governance Forum in Rio de Janeiro will have a very broad agenda with over thirty workshops, 22 best practice forums and 10 meetings of dynamic coalitions specialising in key…
By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch Even the “father of the Internet” could not find a solution to the ongoing fight over the so-called Whois database, which allow checks on who has registered Internet domain names. When Vinton Cerf…
By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch LINZ, AUSTRIA – How distant is the realisation of a “prevision” and prevention culture as portrayed in the Steven Spielberg movie Minority Report? Telling the future is not as far off as critical…
By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch The fight between German collecting rights societies and hardware companies is escalating. This week the CEO of the society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights, Harald Heker, heavily criticised the German Association…
By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch
The European Parliament has voted against criminalising parallel imports of goods in the proposed European Union directive on criminal measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPRED2). Yet these re-imports of products marketed by rights holders in other countries may be criminalised if Parliament does not change a "cleaned-up" draft text of the directive that has quietly emerged, sources say.
The directive is a follow-up to the IP Enforcement Directive (2004/48/EC, IPRED1) passed by the EU in 2004 and will add criminal sanctions against piracy and counterfeiting of a commercial scale. Both IPRED1 and IPRED2 brought about fierce debates about how far protection of intellectual property should go in Europe.
By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch After four years of evermore controversial debate the German Parliament late Thursday passed another reform of the German Copyright Law intended to make updates for the digital age. But some are already planning…
By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch
MUNICH - After years of debate, the window of opportunity could be closing for the proposed next step for harmonising the European patent system by creating a centralised European patent court, judging by comments from officials.
German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries, at a two-day symposium on the Future of the European Patent Jurisdiction in Munich this week, said that if European governments were unable to agree on an overall concept, "we should have the courage to put an end to the discussion and stay with the status quo."
By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch A fight has begun over the virtual existence of Germany’s capital: Does a .berlin address space have a right to exist beside the old standby berlin.de? The outcome of the fight could have…