Original news and analysis on international IP policy
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.
Five new studies on select patent-related topics and informal, open-ended consultations on global issues are the key elements of future work for a World Intellectual Property Organization committee that wrapped up its meeting late Friday.
Georg Greve of Free Software Foundation Europe makes the case that software fails a three-step test to determine patentability.
The committee of the United States Senate drafting legislation to reform the US patent system made little progress at a meeting Thursday, according to sources, but adopted a bipartisan amendment and scheduled to reconvene next week to continue work.
Addressing the challenge of climate change will require technological solutions and the dissemination of those solutions to as many users as possible. A panel at the World Intellectual Property Organization Tuesday asked how intellectual property law might help or hinder that transfer, and what role the organisation might play in creating the right policy.
Regulatory caution on technology standards and intellectual property rights is increasingly necessary, as technology - and the need for interoperability between platforms - dominates the market economy as well as global communications, said a panel on patents and standards Monday.
Questions on how to best to link patent law and development issues led the opening discussion at this week’s World Intellectual Property Organization meeting on patent law. A WIPO study on exceptions and limitations was discussed Monday and Tuesday, with talk turning towards whether a third party examination of the issue was needed.
In a trend appearing in other patent offices around the world, patent applications at the European Patent Office continued to rise in 2008, but at a slower rate toward the end of year. At the EPO, this was coupled with the lowest percentage of granted patents in its history.
The committee on patents at the World Intellectual Property Organization is set to be re-energised next week as it tackles four new reports, and addresses an ongoing question of the relationship of patent rights to wider policy issues on climate change and other environmental issues, public health, and food security.
The genetic revolution has come to food, as debates over how to deal with future pressures of population and climate change look to agricultural technology in hope of answers. But questions still remain over who owns the technology, who will do the research, and what forms of - and even whether - biotechnology is appropriate to human needs and the needs of smallholding farmers.