Original news and analysis on international IP policy
By William New The World Intellectual Property Organization’s newest and potentially highest impact committee – aimed at ensuring all of the organisation’s activities are sufficiently development-friendly to fit its wide-ranging membership – completed its first year with some concrete progress…
By William New Members of the new World Intellectual Property Organization Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP) this week are negotiating implementation of agreed changes to WIPO practices intended to ensure they are development-friendly. Perhaps predictably, countries with the…
Chairman Trevor Clarke of the WIPO Committee on Development and IP on 10 July drafted a summary of the committee's second meeting, being held 7 to 11 July. Members will discuss the text on Friday, and send the agreed version to the September WIPO General Assembly for approval.
By Bennett Lincoff The music industry has been in a decade-long death-spiral. This predicament results primarily from insistence by those who benefited most from how the industry operated before the internet arose that the established relationships upon which their past…
By Itaru Nitta, Green Intellectual Property Project, Geneva, Switzerland Since the current IP framework has been shaped in wealthy societies of the North, accompanied by fertile markets, the North is required to rebuild the framework if they attempt to expand…
[Note: the final version of the chair’s text is now available on the WIPO website.] By William New World Intellectual Property Organization members discussing a work plan for the committee on patent law on Thursday finished work for the year…
By William New World Intellectual Property Organization members addressing international patent policy this week may end work early after an apparent agreement to recommend the continuation of the committee next year and a possible focus on some 20 issues. The…
By Steven Seidenberg for Intellectual Property Watch
The United States has once again chipped away at patent rights. The country's highest court recently handed down a ruling that makes it harder for patent owners to impose limits on downstream users of their inventions.
The US Supreme Court's decision in Quanta Computer Inc. v. LG Electronics Inc., however, fails to address a major issue facing patent owners and their legal counsel: Can patent owners use conditional sales or licensing agreements to impose restrictions on downstream users?
General Electric’s Ecomagination is an initiative launched in 2005 as a gathering/focal point for extant green technology as well as new research and development into clean technology. Ecomagination’s products include technologies for cleaner energy, notably wind turbines for collecting wind…
The Intellectual Property Watch Monthly Reporter features the most important news on international IP policymaking, the latest on who is coming and going in the IP community at the United Nations, World Trade Organization, Geneva missions, regional and national IP…