Original news and analysis on international IP policy
“IP is a very crucial part of our business and I can’t imagine being in biotech without a very strong emphasis on intellectual property,” a biotech industry executive said during a panel organised at the World Intellectual Property Organization yesterday.
“Membership is comfortable with the level of preparedness and what we have done as a country” to host the December trade ministerial, the Kenyan trade minister told press at the World Trade Organization today.
The United Kingdom government is calling for evidence on a proposal to provide designers with an option to mark their products with a web link instead of stamping the product or attaching a label with registered design numbers to provide public notice of registered design rights.
A recent paper by public health experts argues that a treaty on ‘medicines crime’ to combat counterfeit and substandard medicines may not be the best step forward. Rather, it proposes to form an international agreement to “ensure that all proven effective and necessary medicines are affordable, available, and of assured quality,” if the goal is to protect the interests of people and public health.
An agreement entered into by a range of international organisations and others announced this week is expected to lower the price of early infant HIV diagnostic technologies by 35 percent, according to the parties.
Despite progress in recent years to boost local pharmaceutical production in developing countries, policy coherence across the countries is lacking, according to an official at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
A new paper released earlier this month finds that the commons perspective, which embraces knowledge as a shared resource and its management a joint responsibility, could contribute to EU policy discussions and yield better policy outcomes in areas such as health, environment, science and culture, and the internet.
People are becoming increasingly mobile. With that, there are new expectations and needs. Video-on-demand industry experts told a recent event at the World Intellectual Property Organization that this represents a “change of paradigm,” requiring new models for financing and distributing films.
A new report released today shows how mobile technology has fundamentally transformed internet access and use. The report gives forecasts and makes recommendations for policymakers going forward. Among the findings is the rapid rise in dependence on apps, which can raise security, privacy, competition, and cost concerns, as well as issues of availability of locally relevant content online.
While the World Intellectual Property Organization committee on copyright was discussing the protection of broadcasting organisations this week, performers lobbied for fair remuneration in the digital age. Visual artists, for their part, campaigned member states for a new treaty to…