Original news and analysis on international IP policy
In a bid to push forward their ongoing membership negotiations with the European Union, two Balkan States have moved to further harmonise their intellectual property regulations in line with EU legislation. Albania's new copyright law will enter into force this October, and Montenegro's amended legislation on trademarks, industrial design and topographies of semiconductor products entered into force last July.
In Berlin, Hamburg and five other cities in Germany, some 320,000 citizens today protested against the adoption of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Former US Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz today used a 3.5 hour hearing of a Senate subcommittee he chairs to attempt to scare the US Commerce Department National Telecommunications and Information Administration away at the last minute from its plans to transition out of its stewardship role for the internet root zone system.
About a dozen members of the World Intellectual Property Organization yesterday demanded to be provided with a report conducted by the United Nations Office of Investigation and Oversight Services (OIOS) on allegations against the WIPO director general.
Enforcement of intellectual property rights can be unbalanced in developing countries because local laws are crafted in a way that makes it difficult for judges to bring balance in their rulings, a former justice from South Africa told the World Intellectual Property Organization last week.
NAIROBI, Kenya -- At a market stall in Kariokor some 300 metres from Kenya’s capital Nairobi city centre, Stephen Musyoka is busy at work making covers for handwoven baskets, a traditional sisal fibre shopping basket known as Kiondo made by older women from different communities in Kenya.
On 12 September, a powerful member-state committee at the World Intellectual Property Organization will consider the nomination of a new head of copyright, and a sensitive agenda item on a highly secret UN report on whether the WIPO director general engaged in wrongdoing.
A Canadian initiative to fight online counterfeiting and piracy that enables deceived consumers to get their money back is yielding results, a Canadian official said last week. Project Chargeback means to cut the profit margin of counterfeiters on the internet, and supplement legal recourse for right holders.
CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- For 30 years, Nandos, a South African, Portuguese-themed eatery, has made its brand, poking fun at politicians, laughing at the madcaps of society, throwing innuendos with joyful abandon and filling tummies with peri-peri chicken.
Japan's worries about how intellectual property registered in the EU by companies operating in the United Kingdom will fare after Brexit are potentially valid but depend on how the UK's exit from the EU is handled, according to a UK IP attorney following the issue. One question will be whether, and how, EU trademarks and designs can be re-registered in the UK.