Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The annual World Health Assembly kicks off next week with a full agenda of new and old public health issues, including several related to intellectual property, pricing, and research and development. Below is a guide to the key issues for Intellectual Property Watch readers.
The World Intellectual Property Organization Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP) meets next week with a crowded agenda. There will be reports on development-related projects and core issues such as an independent review of WIPO's implementation of its Development Agenda recommendations.
On 11 April 2014, the Spanish Council of Ministers approved a draft law reforming the current Spanish Patent Law of 1986. The reform aims to reconcile the regulation with the international framework, strengthen the Spanish patent system and make it easier and faster to obtain solid patent titles in Spain. It contains a few notable changes.
BASEL -- Students from around the world are gathering momentum to challenge their universities’ licensing policies and research and development systems. That was one of the messages emerging from the annual meeting of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) Europe.
The fight for copyright reform has become a secondary issue, it seems, amidst calls to take back the internet from “evil” intelligence services at the 14th edition of re:publica, the mega-conference on all things digital that took place in Berlin last week.
On the day of his re-election, 8 May, WIPO Director General Francis Gurry spoke briefly to Catherine Saez of Intellectual Property Watch on the process for selection of his senior management team and his vision for the future of the organisation.
Tomorrow, World Intellectual Property Organization members decide whether to re-elect Francis Gurry as director general for another six years. The decision was complicated in recent weeks by detailed allegations of wrongdoing by Gurry put forward by Gurry’s deputy, raising questions about member states’ responsibility in investigating such claims.
The European Union Council of Ministers on 14 April adopted a decision approving the ratification of a protocol meant to facilitate access to genetic resources and to provide the fair sharing of commercial benefits with provider countries. The target date for ratification is July 2014, according to the EU.
Digitisation of copyrighted works is in growing demand, and books are increasingly being made widely available in digital form. Two forms of works however - orphan and out-of-commerce works - are in danger of missing out, said speakers at a recent World Intellectual Property Organization event, and there is a risk of forever losing an important part of our cultural heritage embedded in these works. Another panel, meanwhile, illustrated that laws on copyright and licensing also present obstacles to cross-border use of digitised works by universities, libraries and archives.
Last week, the World Intellectual Property Organization copyright committee ended without agreement on the conclusions of the meeting or its future work, to the dismay of librarians and archivists associations. During the week, numerous representatives of these communities gave vigorous accounts of why a treaty is vital to grant them exceptions to copyright.