Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Managing copyright in digital musical works can be difficult because there are multiple rights holders and no standards for exchanging the massive amounts of data involved. Digital rights management services LyricFind and Rumblefish are among organisations working to streamline access to online content, company chiefs say.
Several subcommittees of the United States Congress have scheduled a joint hearing this week on accountability and possible mistreatment of staff and whistleblowers at the UN World Intellectual Property Organization. The witness list for the hearing includes several high-level critics of the current WIPO director general who used to work for him. Meanwhile, observers are questioning what has happened to the report from an official UN investigation of WIPO.
The amiable mood which prevailed at the outset of the World Intellectual Property Organization committee on genetic resources and traditional knowledge meeting did not hold as negotiations on language of a potential treaty text to prevent misappropriation of genetic resources unearthed vivid divisions on the way to achieve such prevention. In addition, the participation of indigenous peoples is jeopardised by lack of funds, and the committee called for governments to help.
As World Intellectual Property Organization members struggled this week to find consensus on the wording of a potential treaty protecting genetic resources from misappropriation, a side event explored the role of WIPO and the intellectual property system in preventing such misappropriation.
Just days before the restart of negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) on 22 February in Brussels, a large coalition of non-governmental organisations led by the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) published a critical report on new proposals for the highly debated investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms. The activists called the Investment Court System (ICS) prepared by EU Commissioner Malmstroem as an alternative a mere “ISDS zombie.”
Today a new text was issued for the consideration of the WIPO committee on genetic resources and traditional knowledge. The text is a work in progress, according to the group of delegates tasked with proposing consensual language on a draft…
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change seeks to improve its communication to promote its reports, its chair said at a briefing yesterday. Working on its next assessment report expected to be released in five or six years, the IPCC seeks to increase participation of the private sector as a major stakeholders upon which depends the investment to find solutions to climate change he said.
In the fight against antimicrobial resistance, members of the European Parliament’s Environment and Public Health Committee have advocated banning collective and preventive antibiotic treatment of animals, and supported measures to stimulate research into new antibiotics, including longer data protection.
The World Health Organization today issued its strategic response framework and joint operations and research plan, which lays out a strategy until June, to investigate and respond to the medical complications linked to the spreading Zika virus.
In response to the concerns about industry lobbying voiced by civil society recently at a symposium on agricultural biotechnologies, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) director general insists on the UN agency’s neutrality.
Priorities for the pharmaceutical industry in 2016 are antimicrobial resistance and the quest for new antibiotics, the strengthening of regulatory systems to facilitate access to drugs, and work on non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes and cancer, according to the head of an international pharmaceutical industry group.
World Intellectual Property Organization members this week are discussing ways to protect genetic resources from misappropriation and ensure that those resources, when their access has been agreed - if exploited commercially - open up rights to the sharing of benefits from this exploitation. Negotiators yesterday discussed what type of instrument might be agreed, and debated a proposal to require disclosure of origin of genetic material.