Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The United States today lost its right to vote in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) General Conference for failing to pay its dues. The US withheld its dues after UNESCO members voted to grant Palestinian membership in 2011. The US has legislation against Palestinian membership as a state in organisations.
Seong-Joon Park is the director general of the Trademark & Design Examination Bureau at the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO). He sat down this week with Intellectual Property Watch to present TM5, a joint global initiative on trademark and design with four other IP-intensive offices, and his vision for trademark and designs in South Korea. As part of the initiative, KIPO is holding a weeklong series of events on trademark and designs in December.
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) today issued a warning about the rise of Rockstar, a consortium of large companies such as Microsoft, Apple and Sony, formed to assert former Nortel patents. The consortium recently sued Google and other companies for infringement of several of those patents.
A US Chamber of Commerce Global Intellectual Property Center (GIPC) event tomorrow will include efforts to bring industry forces closer together to get congressional support for the nearly completed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement and for proposed legislation on patent litigation.
Cypto-guru Bruce Schneier, who has analysed thousands of documents provided by Edward Snowden on the secret surveillance programmes of the US National Security Agency, has called on the technical community to add encryption to the network and also come up with a new model for internet governance.
Years-old efforts by members of the World Health Organization to come up with viable ways to boost research and development of medical products for diseases primarily affecting poor populations are coming to head, with a key meeting in December. That meeting of experts will be an opportunity to narrow down proposals being developed by the six WHO regional offices.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has announced a workshop in Ukraine next year aimed at fighting counterfeit technology products, representing a notable foray into intellectual property rights protection by the UN agency.
It was clear at today’s opening of a World Intellectual Property Organization committee on industrial designs that developing countries were standing firm on their request to include mandatory technical assistance and capacity building in a potential procedural treaty aimed at facilitating international registration of this form of intellectual property right.
The World Intellectual Property Organization has scheduled an Extraordinary General Assembly from 10-12 December, in order to complete unfinished work from the annual WIPO General Assembly in September.
The United Kingdom has announced the implementation of new rules that extend the term of copyright for sound recordings and performers rights in such recordings from 50 to 70 years.
A growing list of US industries has sent a letter to the leaders of the US House of Representatives and Senate judiciary committees urging them to combat patent assertion entities (PAEs), also known as patent trolls.
Countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement have undertaken an intensive series of negotiating meetings on specific topics over the coming month, ending with a meeting of chief negotiators and key experts in late November.