Original news and analysis on international IP policy
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - The five-metre tall 3D printer dwarfs four engineers in the renewable energy laboratory at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, the biggest tertiary institution in the Eastern Cape, South Africa.
Thought about buying a smart phone, smart TV, smart car? – think twice. Wikileaks today (7 March) released over 8,000 documents illustrating hacking activities of the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA. In what has been described by some commentators as a bigger leak than the Snowden revelations about the National Security Agency in 2013, the whistleblower platform allowed a glimpse into the CIA hacking into smart TVs and smartphones and presented a list of zero day vulnerabilities found, bought and sometimes shared with colleagues in other agencies, including British colleagues. Wikileaks announced that today’s leak was the “Year Zero” tranche of the much bigger “Vault 7” project: more redacted details from the documents and much more documents will be published.
The World Trade Organization committee on intellectual property rights met this week with some discussion items that departed from past agendas but are becoming more familiar. A discussion on electronic commerce revealed interest from members, despite a slow start on details. And discussions on the United Nations High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines prompted nourished interactions and a wish by some countries to pursue the subject in future sessions.
The creativity-oriented UN World Intellectual Property Organization is often at its best when displaying the colorfully multicultural nature of its membership.
The Swiss Parliament this week adopted new legislation to regulate offline and online gambling by limiting it to a fixed number of Swiss-based operators only. While heavily criticised by opponents inside and outside the Parliament in Bern, the main goal was to harvest revenue streams for the general public and enforce a number of obligation. A number of opponents in the Parliament sided with activists in their call for caution against the ‘slippery slope’ of net filtering. A look at other countries illustrates that filtering on an IP or domain name basis is on the rise.
Renewed discussions on the protection of traditional cultural expressions at the World Intellectual Property Organization have produced a new draft text that provides a clearer view of the different ways in which countries see a that treaty could help against misappropriation of indigenous cultural heritage. Divergences remain on core questions such as what and who should benefit from the protection of an international treaty, in which terms, and to what extent.
The Office of the United States Trade Representative today released its 2017 trade policy agenda. The report includes numerous references to intellectual property rights, mainly focused on enforcement, plans for multilateral discussions on IPR and trade, and promises of an aggressive stance on geographical indications. But overall it is short on overall details about what's to come with the new administration.
The German Federal Intelligence Agency (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND) spied on foreign journalists, according to a report of German magazine “Der Spiegel”. A document obtained by the magazine showed that the BND had taps on at least 50 phone numbers, fax numbers and email addresses of journalists from the BBC, Reuters and the New York Times.
The European Commission is pushing ahead with its Multilateral Investment Court (MIC) project, but called requests to eliminate specialised investor protection mechanisms unrealistic during a dedicated meeting with stakeholders in Brussels today.
It is generally held that traditional cultural expressions reflect communities’ cultural and social background and include elements of their heritage. For indigenous and local communities, those expressions of their traditional culture are vital. Next week, World Intellectual Property Organization committee members are expected to advance on a draft treaty text to protect those expressions, and look for ways to agree on basic principles, such as what the treaty should protect, how, and who it should protect.