Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Members of a World Intellectual Property Organization committee last week reached some tough agreements on issues relating to the next two years’ program and budget, but had to pass on unfinished work to the full WIPO membership, which will meet in two weeks.
After four years of talks, committee members at the World Intellectual Property Organization have agreed on a definition for what constitutes an expenditure on development in the UN agency.
The World Intellectual Property Organization has fewer staff overall but more senior staff, according to an annual report on human resources at the United Nations agency. In addition, while efforts at WIPO are continuing to expand geographical diversity among staff, the number of countries represented fell last year. Western Europe provides half of all staff. Meanwhile, women make up about a quarter of senior posts.
The UN World Intellectual Property Organization has been working in recent years to improve its audit and oversight functions under the watchful eye of its member states. On the opening day of its meeting this week, the influential Program and Budget Committee (PBC) took several actions to advance the process, with some key positions in flux.
The government of Switzerland has decided to give a CHF 400 million interest-free loan toward renovation of the Palais des Nations, the United Nations headquarters in Europe. The CHF 837 million project is expected to begin in 2017 and be completed in 2023, the UN said.
The Place des Nations, home to the United Nations in Geneva, is adorned with a temporary exhibition this week. The work of Italian artist Davide Dormino representing Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden was inaugurated this morning.
The tentative workplan for this week’s World Intellectual Property Organization Program and Budget Committee (PBC) has been circulated. The PBC is meeting from 14-18 September. Documents are available here. The tentative plan for addressing the agenda items is available here…
The normative work at the World Intellectual Property Organization on the protection of traditional knowledge, genetic resources, and folklore was suspended last year. In the lead-up to the 2015 WIPO General Assembly, the United States has proposed to discontinue the mandate of the committee working on the subject. The US suggests replacing the committee with seminars, studies, and an experts working group. Meanwhile, Switzerland, on behalf of a group of countries, has proposed that the committee's work resume. And still other countries may be seeking to make the committee a permanent feature at the UN agency.
The World Intellectual Property Organization Program and Budget Committee meets next week to address several substantive issues. Among the issues to be discussed is the financing of the system of protection of geographical indications, which has been called into question by non-members of the system. Other topics are external WIPO offices, and if the WIPO coordination office in New York should be closed, what constitutes development expenditures in the budget, and how to implement a recommendation by the United Nations Joint Inspection Unit.
A new study released by the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM), the European trademark office, measured the cost of intellectual property infringement in sport goods. According to the study, counterfeit in sport goods in the European Union causes a loss of revenue of some €500 million annually.
Transparency in negotiating free trade agreements continues to be a controversial issue, despite attempts of the official negotiators, especially European Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem, to pour oil on troubled waters. Regardless of Malmstroem's transparency initiative for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the US-EU FTA, a storm is brewing in an area not easily neglected by negotiators.
We should be careful in creating registrable rights on the traditional knowledge (TK) including traditional medicine practices and classifying TK under intellectual property rights, which are private exclusive rights operating like a monopoly in practice. Patents create private spaces in the knowledge arena (though for a short duration), and therefore no private appropriation should be allowed in the realm of TK, writes R.S. Praveen Raj.