Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, to be adopted this week at UN Headquarters, could fall short of its health targets unless the governments embark on “U-turn” changes to rectify the dysfunctions in global governance that undermine health, writes Daniele Dionisio.
After 54 years, the American flag has once again been raised over the American Embassy in Cuba. What does the newfound activity in Cuba mean for your brand? Is it time to protect your trademark in Cuba? The answer from most is a hearty “yes,” writes Pam Huff.
The Federal Circuit will soon hear Lexmark v. Impression Products, a case about ink cartridges. Impression, a foreign buyer, refills spent Lexmark cartridges and resells them in the United States. Impression claims that Lexmark, having sold the cartridges, has exhausted its patent rights, and cannot hold Impression liable for patent infringement. The Federal Circuit will address whether the US patent is exhausted with the sale of the patented product outside the US, write Burcu Kilic and Peter Maybarduk.
In 2011 in a small court in Ecuador’s Amazon jungle, a judge ordered the American oil giant Chevron to pay US$9 billion dollars in damages for pollution in the region that was caused by drilling activities in the 1970s and 1980s. The company quickly denounced landmark ruling as illegitimate. More than a year before the final ruling had been issued, Chevron had already taken steps to initiate an investor-state dispute against the Government of Ecuador under the terms of a US-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty (BIT). The company seeks to avoid paying the US$9 billion by convincing an international tribunal that the courts of Ecuador are corrupt and that the government is ultimately responsible for any environmental damage and associated health issues experienced by local residents, writes Kyla Tienhaara in Green Agenda.
Many developing countries lack enough human resources with the necessary skills to access patent information. Although patent documents are often unintelligible, strengthening the ability to search them in databases could help reduce information asymmetries in developing countries, Luis Gil Abinader writes.
Since the debut of Candid Camera in the late 1940s, unscripted television of varying genres (from game shows to documentaries) has been a staple of American television. Not until the worldwide success of shows such as Survivor, however, did the genre, and in particular the staged competition variety of unscripted “reality” television, become a dominant source of programming in the US market. Reality television often takes on a familiar pattern – as the season progresses contestants are eliminated by audience and “expert” votes leaving one person or couple to win the grand prize. The myriad ways in which to package this formula has no limits, and in light of the success of such shows, a vast number of people are creating and pitching what they believe to be both original and the next Survivor. And that leads to lawsuits.
We should be careful in creating registrable rights on the traditional knowledge (TK) including traditional medicine practices and classifying TK under intellectual property rights, which are private exclusive rights operating like a monopoly in practice. Patents create private spaces in the knowledge arena (though for a short duration), and therefore no private appropriation should be allowed in the realm of TK, writes R.S. Praveen Raj.
The negotiating process to achieve post-2015 development goals has clarified the agenda that governments ought to follow until 2030. Unfortunately, due to vague terms and the lack of unequivocal definitions, a number of relevant issues still lie in uncertainty, writes Pietro Dionisio
On August 20, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published proposed amendments to current rules governing trial practice before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) under the America Invents Act (AIA). The new proposals contain more substantive changes than the May package and while all parties will appreciate the USPTO clarifying various issues in the proposed rules, many patent owners may be underwhelmed with the real-world impact of the proposals, especially the portion dealing with motions to amend claims during AIA trials, write Jason Lohr and Stephen Shaw.
This week the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published a proposed rule to amend the existing rules of practice for inter partes review, post-grant review, the transitional program for covered business method patents and derivation proceedings that implemented provisions of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA).