Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The Brussels-based World Customs Organization has updated its online tool for field customs officers to communicate in real time with rights holders on counterfeiting of their brands. The WCO announced its partnership with another company providing authentication and traceability technologies, bringing over 30 additional top brands on board.
The World Trade Organization is taking steps to make the vast store of information shared by WTO members in the Council on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) easier to use.
The European Commission Directorate General for Enterprise and Industry is gathering stakeholder input on standardisation and intellectual property rights, in order to assess the current framework on patents and standard and look at how it should evolve. Standard-setting cuts across many organisations at the national, European and international levels. Views are being sought until January 2015.
The United Kingdom today launched a new licensing scheme aimed at opening access to more than 91 million creative works whose owners or copyright holders are not known or not found.
In perhaps her first big speech since being nominated by President Obama to head the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Michelle Lee today told an industry meeting today to use the patent system responsibly and with balance. The agency is embarking on a new global effort to streamline processes and improve quality. And for the first time in a long time, she said, USPTO has the financial resources to do it.
Critics poring over a newly leaked alleged draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) intellectual property chapter say it shows the United States is taking an all-out lurch toward greater protection and less access, causing outrage among public interest groups.
Comments must be submitted in the new two to three weeks for an extraordinary review by the United States government of India's protection of US intellectual property rights.
A report released today by an American technology industry group ranks countries on the basis of mercantilist policies, urging the United States and multilateral organisations to issue a "bold response" to these restrictive and anti-competitive practices - including intellectual property theft and compulsory licensing permitted under WTO rules in developing countries. The top targets? China and India.
“Intellectual property is a substantial chunk of business investment,” Tony Clayton, chief economist in the United Kingdom IP Office, told a side gathering at the recent World Intellectual Property Organization General Assembly. “It really does matter.”
A recent cybersquatting case processed under the World Intellectual Property Organization internet domain dispute procedures offers a possible glimpse of the plight of ordinary internet users in a global system dominated by large companies and their legal teams.