Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The rapid pace of technology and dramatic shifts in the global economy will bring change to the multilateral structure set up after the Second World War, and these changes will affect the intellectual property system, World Intellectual Property Organization Director General Francis Gurry said this week.
What would happen if the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) received an application for a .wikileaks top level domain name (TLD) next year, under its new system of opening up the internet for domains? It could make an interesting example of how well the complex system to apply for new TLDs works and how much political intervention is possible in the system. At the 39th ICANN meeting in Cartagena, Colombia this week, the self-regulatory body is trying to finalise issues in the published Final Applicant Guidebook - and it is governments and trademark owners that are calling for more time and more procedures.
In the Caribbean, issues of traditional knowledge in intellectual property are hardly considered to be of special significance to the majority of policymakers and, except for a few pockets of interest groups such as a group of Rastafarians in Jamaica, the average citizen is uninformed on the subject. The protection of the cultural heritage of the region through a normative system of law is exceedingly necessary for the survival of our unique brand of cultural expression, writes Abiola Inniss.
Global talks to address climate change being held in Cancun hobbled along last week amid calls for flexibility among parties. Japan declared its opposition to an extension of the Kyoto Protocol setting binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, civil society worried about transparency in the negotiating process, as countries started negotiations on specific texts.
This year marks the first time a website address may exist fully in Chinese, Russian, Arabic, or other non-Latin scripts. Ten years from now, the percentage of English content could easily drop below 25 percent. But there are still obstacles to this linguistically local revolution, writes John Yunker.
Canada's Parliament has the power to save lives of millions afflicted with HIV around the world if they will act to ease intellectual property-related restrictions on their access to medicines, Canadian civil society groups said today.
To solve many of the dilemmas facing copyright holders in the digital age, some say the World Intellectual Property Organization must create and administer an international repertoire database, compiling information about who owns what rights related to specific artistic works.
What do the fearsome leader of France’s three-strikes agency, a top Microsoft counsel, Google’s copyright counsel, a free software activist, Egyptian and British librarians, a South American development-oriented academic, and a European music authors’ representative have in common? While one might be tempted to say, ‘very little’, a recent gathering showed one thing - they represent the very wide range of current views on the future of copyright licensing.
Innovation or “jugaad” has always driven the Indian economy. However, the last decade has been witness to an emerging paradigm shift to high-quality value-added innovation, writes industry lawyer Sunita K. Sreedharan.
"Given that global copyright rules have acquired such a pervasive impact in many facets of our lives, their reform needs to take place through an open, inclusive and participatory consultation process where ‘all of us’ have a say," writes Ahmed Abdel Latif.