Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Just weeks before being abruptly arrested and strip-searched in New York, a now-departed Indian diplomat took on the powerful US business lobby over India’s controversial approach to intellectual property.
In this interview, Intellectual Property Watch sat down with Prof. Chidi Oguamanam, a professor in the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, to talk about his recent book, “Intellectual Property in Global Governance: A Development Question.” The book, published by Routledge, covers issues of the knowledge economy, structures and regime dynamics, human rights, agriculture, traditional/indigenous knowledge, traditional cultural expressions/folklore, and management of intellectual property in global governance.
Looking back on 2013, the list of the most-viewed stories on the Intellectual Property Watch website shows that reporting on activities in India, especially related to patents and public health, continued to draw the most attention. Other top stories were the Marrakesh Treaty on copyright exceptions for blind readers, legal cases involving patents on seeds and on plant and human genes, the election for World Intellectual Property Organization director general, free-trade agreements (including the Wikileaks leak of the IP chapter of the Trans-Atlantic Partnership agreement), Russian copyrights, and 3D printing.
The State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO) has a new commissioner, Shen Changyu. And the World Intellectual Property Organization wasted no time in meeting with him. China was approved last month to receive a new WIPO office.
The Office of the United States Trade Representative will again make intellectual property rights a top priority in trade relations with China in 2014, and will not hesitate to take actions such as to bring World Trade Organization dispute settlement cases as needed, USTR has said.
More than 250 academics from around the world have signed a declaration strongly calling for a stop to surveillance of citizens' communications online by US and European authorities. And in December, more than 500 top authors joined a coalition called Writers against Mass Surveillance calling for international rules to curb wholesale surveillance.
A recent conference on intellectual property and the public interest concluded with the adoption of public interest principles to guide international trade negotiations and international organisations.
The World Intellectual Property Organization will hold a conference in January on open innovation and the future of knowledge, featuring some surprising speakers.
Five top trademark offices, which call themselves the TM5, met earlier this month in Seoul, South Korea, and agreed on seminars, reports and other activities intended to improve their coordination and help fight bad practices.
A new private-sector report shows that after a downturn, patents on a range of technologies for water are back on the rise as companies are busy innovating around a basic human need and resource.