Original news and analysis on international IP policy
BANGKOK – So-called disruptive innovation - currently referring to the technologies of Internet of Things, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and big data – are changing the way people live their life and affecting existing traditional industries, but current legal regimes are unequipped to deal with these changes yet, government and private experts said at a recent forum here.
George Willingmyre writes: The process a Standards Developing Organization (SDO) employs to revise its patent policy is an aspect of the SDO’s competitive posture in the global marketplace. A dearth of research exists on the processes SDOs employ to revise their patent policies. Generally, the processes an SDO uses to revise its patent policy are part of the governance processes of the SDO. As a baseline, the governance processes of an SDO must be consistent with the applicable legal system defining what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior. What an SDO says about its governance processes is a further consideration. Thus the procedures themselves, the procedures’ relationship to the applicable legal system and what the SDO says about the procedures all play a role in understanding how an SDO revises its patent policy.
Whatever else could be said of 2016, it was undeniably interesting. That’s likely to be true, too, for 2017. Even the staid area of US Intellectual Property Law may face dramatic changes. Here's the likely most important of those changes.
It is too early to push the panic button with regard to the rise of protectionism under new US President Donald Trump, David Cote, CEO of US multinational Honeywell, said on a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum today in Davos.
A range of civil society organisations have issued a public statement opposing the United States Army’s proposed grant of an exclusive licence on technology necessary to produce a Zika vaccine to French pharmaceutical company Sanofi. The letter cites concerns that the exclusive licence might violate US law and could lead to high priced medicines as consumers buy back taxpayer-funded research.
The lack of an intellectual property regime for animal breeding in Kenya is undermining efforts to curb illegal exploitation of Kenyan animal genetic resources, according to industry representatives.
Nearly two dozen top biopharmaceutical companies have launched a global initiative intended to increase access to prevention and care of non-transmitted diseases in low and lower-middle income countries.
Effective laws, including those around intellectual property rights, and an enabling legal environment, are as essential to a healthy society as clean water, a group made up of a representative of the World Health Organization, academics and a legal expert for a civil society group, have asserted while launching a key report.
Coolness alert! The Free Software Foundation has announced an updated list of high priority projects on a global scale. Top priorities now include a free software phone operating system, clouds, hardware, voice and video chat, inclusiveness, security and internationalisation of…
Artificial intelligence has succeeded the Internet of Things or the earlier cloud mania as buzzword number one at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum that started today (17 January) in Davos, Switzerland. While ethical questions surrounding the intelligent machines are discussed at length and the question for regulatory steps considered, answers of who will own the knowledge created by machines or intelligent bots vary.
Newly released results of a survey published by the Queen Mary University of London on disputes relating to technology, media and telecommunications reveal interesting details about the types of disputes brought and the reasons behind them.
Although the main governing body of the World Health Organization is the annual World Health Assembly held in May, many decisions are made at the annual January session of the WHO Executive Board. Among the topics to be discussed next week are the election of a new director general, antimicrobial resistance, the financing of research and development for health products.