Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has published the Global Cybersecurity Index 2017 (GCI-2017). The GCI-2017, the second in this index series, measures the commitments of the 193 member states of the ITU to cybersecurity and helps the member states to identify areas for improvement, according to a press release.
The intergovernmental Council of Europe, based in Strasbourg, France, has published a freely available report on exceptions and limitations to copyright. The report comes as a contribution to the ongoing process of reforming European copyright rules.
MONTREUX -- The legal profession is experiencing a “radical change” due to technology, a globally known author told the recent European IP Law Summit in Montreux, Switzerland. Technology has become “affordable” and professions “unaffordable” in a technology-based internet society, he said. Separately, a Belgian appeals court judge laid out details on the Unified Patent Court of Europe.
The lack of content on the internet in local languages and the lack of local digital skills, especially among women and girls, remain central challenges for the digital economy, speakers said during a panel discussion at the recent World Summit on the Information Society Forum 2017 (WSIS Forum 2017).
For years, the intellectual property system, created to protect products of the mind including inventions, held little interest for the continually evolving ancestral culture of indigenous peoples. But the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities are now discussed in many fora, including the World Intellectual Property Organization, where the focus is how to use the IP system to protect indigenous knowledge and genetic resources from misappropriation and exploitation. And the UN organisation just issued two publications on possible ways to use the IP system to do just that.
Just before the upcoming elections in September, the German government seems eager to push through legislation to rein in internet hate speech, fake news, and also legalise state hacks and police searches of computers and mobile phones against suspects of all kinds. Even at the United Nations and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) level the recent initiatives in Germany have resulted in some raised eyebrows. The draft hate speech law has also “made it to the alert list of the Council of Europe Platform to promote the protection of journalism.”
With figures now available for what intellectual property infringement is worth, the European Union copyright office made a call to action at its 2nd International IP Enforcement Summit in Berlin, which ended today. “Now that we know the facts, it is time to move to action and problem solving,” said Antonio Campinos, head of the EU IP Office (EUIPO).
There are still many unanswered questions about intellectual property rights, speakers said during an academic conference last week in Geneva. Think tank analyst and author Pedro Roffe, who was the focal point of the conference, said at the event that there is “particularly in Geneva” place for dialogue about “very important and emerging” IP questions.
The number of participants, sessions and the quality of the contributions of the different speakers has never been as high as during this year’s edition of the World Summit on the Information Society Forum (the WSIS Forum 2017), according to organisers.
BERLIN -- The future of the European intellectual property enforcement framework is under heavy discussion at the second IP Enforcement Summit of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) in Berlin today.