Original news and analysis on international IP policy
LONDON—Leaders of the world’s largest economies struck a closed-door deal late Tuesday to create an international court for intellectual property litigation in a move sources said they deemed a best effort to turn back global economic demise.
The Obama administration’s new trade team has quickly come under pressure to focus on protecting United States interests, including enforcement of intellectual property rights, at a time when multilateral institutions urge governments to remain open for the sake of the global economy.
The European Commission this week will launch a forum for coordinating attacks against counterfeit and pirated goods, to be announced at a daylong event featuring representatives from a wide range of industries. No representatives of the public interest or consumers appear to be included in the event or related initiatives.
Several German ministries seem to be in a footrace to draft legal text for a filtering regime blocking child pornography from German users’ personal computers agreed by the government last week.
The parliaments of Sweden and the European Union are urging the European Union to make public all documentation related to a secretive global anti-counterfeiting treaty, while the United States has claimed the papers are a matter of national security and therefore a state secret. But now the US has decided to undertake a review of its transparency.
A final decision on a World Trade Organization case over intellectual property rights protection between China and the United States was accepted by the states Friday, with both claiming its arbiter had affirmed their positions.
The United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office on Monday published a proposal for a “rights agency” that would tackle problems related to digital copyright. The envisioned agency that would be managed and funded by rights owners and take up a two-fold task by facilitating the creation of a digital market and preventing and reducing online piracy.
Bennett Lincoff writes: If Choruss abandons the time-tested approach of licensing and relies instead on covenants not to sue, it will facilitate a brazen money grab by the major labels it represents, leaving songwriters, recording artists and music publishers empty-handed, and college students holding the bag.
Santiago Roca escriba: La Unión Europea está solicitando mas extensiones en propiedad intelectual que los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica en la negociación del tratado de libre comercio.
Brazil, once criticised for lax intellectual property rights protection, has been stepping up implementation and enforcement of international IP rules in recent years, a World Trade Organization body announced Wednesday. But some major rights-holding nations urged the government to undertake further work.