Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The World Health Organization faces a significant shift in its human resources status when polio eradication efforts come to an end in 2018, and so far, transition planning has been “sporadic and limited,” according to an independent study.
In the post-2015 Development Agenda, United Nations members must explicitly support research and development, related policies and capacity building with special attention to the low and middle income countries, in order to advance global health targets, experts said at a recent event in Geneva.
Reflecting its growing place on the international policy agenda, nutrition was a major focus of last week’s World Health Assembly.
The intellectual property offices of the European Union, in their commitment to harmonise practices, recently published a Common Communication establishing a common practice on the scope of protection given to black and white trademarks in the EU.
Gavin Cloherty is associate director of scientific affairs at the US molecular diagnosis developer Abbott Molecular. Abbott has a long-standing history of developing tests for detecting and monitoring hepatitis, among other areas. With Intellectual Property Watch, Cloherty discussed the burden of hepatitis C, the process of diagnosis and the importance of diagnosis for curbing and treating the disease.
The World Intellectual Property Organization committee on development closed last week with little to show after a week of unyielding opposing positions on every sensitive issue by several countries. Frustration was palpable as those issues were sent to the next session for further discussions, with the risk of renewed disagreement.
Country officials, academics and leading global health advocates this week raised one of the key concerns of this year’s World Health Assembly: innovation and access to medicines in middle-income countries. Government procurement strategies, voluntary and compulsory licensing, de-linkage models and UNITAID mechanisms were among some of the solutions put forward.
"Emerging Markets and the World Patent Order" is a new book that looks at patent system implementation in emerging market and developing countries, and the response to this implementation by Europe and the United States. Florida State University Law Prof. Frederick Abbott, one of the organisers and editors of the book, recently discussed the book with Intellectual Property Watch
Music, movie, and television companies suffered a major defeat yesterday, when the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The ruling will lead to a flood of new copyright infringement suits against these content companies, according to many experts. And content companies may not be the only losers.
The United Nations Development Programme has launched a new publication on the use of competition law to promote access to health technologies. The guidebook describes competition law as an underused tool to be harnessed by developing countries and is designed to help them proficiently using it.