Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has embarked on a programme of allowing new generic top-level domains on the internet (like .com), an initiative that has worried trademark holders and international organisations. Now the World Intellectual Property Organization Arbitration and Mediation Center is offering services for trademark holders who wish to challenge proposals for new gTLDs later this year.
A new paper from the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) offers ideas on addressing misappropriation of genetic resources and traditional knowledge at the World Intellectual Property Organization.
For years, some developing countries have insisted that developed countries – which own the vast majority of intellectual property rights – take a singular focus when it comes to offering technical assistance on IP rights: the protection of “northern” property. In recent years, negotiations in venues like the World Intellectual Property Organization have sought to ensure that such assistance also highlight the creation of local IP rights as well as the availability of flexibilities developing countries have under international rules for IP.
Some 70 groups from across the social and political spectrum have sent a letter to the US Senate and House of Representatives calling for them to step back from any anti-piracy legislation until more consideration can be given of the effect on the internet.
Delegates at the World Intellectual Property Organization this week resumed an adjourned October meeting and agreed to continue exploring the possibility of a treaty on industrial design by commissioning an impact study on the costs and effects of such a treaty. They also found consensus on the modalities of an information meeting on the role and responsibility of internet intermediaries in the context of trademarks, and decided to explore further the question of the protection of country names.
The World Intellectual Property Organization has launched a survey of stakeholder perceptions and expectations of the UN agency.
After being adjourned in November in the mists of a fire at the World Intellectual Property Organization, a meeting on trademarks and industrial designs resumed today in icy Geneva.
The initial application period for the expansion of new generic top-level domains on the internet is going well after the first couple of weeks, but it is too soon to put the armoury of intellectual property protections to the test, the head of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said today.
A private sector-led effort to compile a global register of geographical indications is gaining support, topped by a sizeable donation from the Italian government. The effort is being undertaken outside the World Trade Organization in spite of an agreed - but long stalled - mandate at WTO to create a register.
A much-referenced book now out in paperback remains one of the few books with a broad social sciences perspective on current conflicts over intellectual property policy, with a focus on the national level set within the context of shifting global patterns.
The World Health Organization Executive Board this week agreed to propose to the May World Health Assembly the establishment of a mechanism for international collaboration on counterfeit and substandard medical products, but with the exclusion of trade and intellectual property issues.
While most of the 27 member states of the European Union signed the much-debated Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) yesterday in Tokyo, joining the United States, Japan and other ACTA partners, hackers brought down the website of the European Parliament, and a key official stepped down. This may be only the beginning of the protests and petitioning.