Original news and analysis on international IP policy
World Intellectual Property Organization delegates this week are trying to refine draft articles relating to the protection of traditional cultural expressions (folklore) that could form the basis for an international instrument. Delegates also are considering the connection of the issue to traditional knowledge.
When “Innocence of Muslims” first appeared online, the video provoked outrage among millions of Muslims around the world. Now the consternation has spread to many copyright experts, internet firms, news organisations, and entertainment companies, who assert that a recent 9th Circuit decision about the movie makes a major change in US copyright law, with terrible consequences for the internet, media, and free speech. Others state that the ruling makes no change at all in US law.
As bacteria become more and more resistant to existing medicines, product pipelines are drying up. A solution may lie in a forgotten therapy developed in 1917, the use of which has been restricted to certain parts of Eastern Europe ever since the discovery and universal use of antibiotics. But business models and intellectual property regimes need to change to provide incentives for research and development in this area.
NEW YORK - “This is a very, very exciting time be in patent law,” Drew Hirshfeld, deputy commissioner for patent examination policy at the US Patent and Trademark Office, told a group of intellectual property lawyers last week.
In his keynote address to the 19-20 March Corporate IP Counsel meeting in Manhattan, Hirshfeld and a range of private sector speakers laid out a picture of a highly dynamic field, with legal and business opportunities and challenges changing every day.
A quantitative analysis of the 187 submissions to the April NETmundial conference on the future of internet governance shows broad support for improving security, ensuring respect for privacy, ensuring freedom of expression, and globalizing the IANA function, analyst Richard Hill writes.
European Patent Office (EPO) employees on 13 March approved seven office-wide strike days, starting on 21 March. The move follows an increasingly tense stand-off between the Staff Union of the European Patent Office (SUEPO) and President Benoît Battistelli over, as a union document put it, timely access to justice, freedom of speech and freedom of association. The deteriorating relationship between employees and office officials prompted one French lawmaker to ask government ministers to rethink their country's support for Battistelli's reappointment. If unresolved, the labour issues could end up subjecting the EPO to closer scrutiny as it prepares to administer the EU unitary patent, one source close to the situation said.
The issue of medicines access for low-income people in developing countries has been of major concern to global health policymakers for years. A key issue is the inability of northern pharmaceutical producers to develop and distribute affordable medicines and recover their research and development costs.
As part of the effort to address this, a non-governmental group was formed in coordination with industry and other stakeholders to develop an index to rate companies’ efforts to ameliorate the situation.
Julia Fraser for Intellectual Property Watch recently sat down with Hans Hogerzeil, a former senior World Health Organization official and a top strategist for the Access to Medicine Index, to discuss the index’s impact, independence and the future.
Amid intensifying competition in the global economy, companies rely more heavily than ever on the advantages of trade secrets. This critical proprietary information includes, for example, market research, product plans, unique formulas and manufacturing methods, computer code and customer data - knowledge that companies build through years of hard work, experience and investment, writes Pamela Passman.
An innovative South African start-up is offering local university students a way around buying cheap pirated books with a legal print-on-demand service that slashes the price of expensive academic textbooks.
Last January, Egypt and Tunisia enacted new constitutions which provide for the protection of intellectual property rights, at the constitutional level, for the first time in the history of both countries. In addition, they include clauses which give priority to building a knowledge economy, Ahmed Abdel-Latif writes.