Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The World Intellectual Property Organization is expected this month to create a new deputy director general for global challenges, and will raise trademarks to the DDG level while moving copyright responsibility back to the assistant director general level, according to sources at WIPO. The appointments have not been finalised and consultations may be continuing.
An informal special session at the World Trade Organization on a register for geographical indications - product names associated with a particular place and characteristics - was nudged toward “substantive” talks last week, according to some participants.
Counterfeit medicines were left off this year’s truncated World Health Assembly agenda but still managed to have an impact. The contentious, intellectual property-related issue arose during a discussion on the World Health Organization’s future plans, as several nations objected to a budget line referencing a programme to combat counterfeit drugs.
Responsibility to take forward a still in-progress framework to cope with global influenza pandemics is now in the hands of the World Health Organization Director General Margaret Chan, member states agreed in a meeting Thursday. This was approved by the full World Health Assembly on Friday.
Applause broke out at the annual World Health Assembly Friday as agreement was reached at the end of a five-year process to devise a plan for boosting research and development on and access to drugs needed by developing countries. Now with the full assembly's approval, the focus will turn to implementation and as-yet unclear ways to pay for it.
Some five years after setting a mandate to address barriers faced by poor countries in accessing needed medicines, World Health Organization members are near agreement on a strategy and plan of action. But a key question remains on WHO involvement in a possible treaty on biomedical research and development for diseases disproportionately affecting developing nations, and the WHO secretariat is facing accusations that the process has not been amply inclusive.
As the world looks to the World Health Assembly for a plan of action in case of pandemic, delegates are negotiating remaining parts of a framework for pandemic influenza preparedness, and an associated model agreement for the movement of virus and vaccine-related materials.
A procedural agreement might come as early as Tuesday afternoon, but it remains to be seen whether agreement can be reached on how to handle uncompleted work.
Patent reform may be chugging along in the United States Congress, but so far, with the Senate soon to be consumed with what could be a contentious Supreme Court nomination fight, and with President Obama still lacking a new director of the US Patent and Trademark Office, some are questioning whether reform will actually happen this year. In addition, a key "first-to-file" provision in the US bill to harmonise with other countries may be more appearance than substance.
A series of meetings intended to set out a global framework for dealing with a potential pandemic completed its last session Saturday night with progress made but several essential issues still uncompleted.
The annual World Health Assembly kicks off Monday with key issues of intellectual property and public health on the agenda, but the plan to end the assembly early this year in the face of the pandemic influenza crisis has trimmed talks on counterfeit medicines from the meeting, according to official sources.