Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The World Health Organization is under siege by private sector forces using their financial leverage to gain undue influence in the financially beleaguered United Nations agency, a developing country-oriented group has said.
Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla opened the 43rd meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in San Jose with concern about “attempts to regulate the network among which we have the Stop Online Piracy Act seeking protection of intellectual property by restrictions on the addressing and the Protect intellectual Property Act seeking to extend some national jurisdiction towards the entire cyberspace.”
In a move welcomed by many in the international community, India has granted an application, its first, from a homegrown generic drug maker to manufacture and sell a patented cancer drug under a compulsory licence.
International trademark applications filed in 2011 reached a record high of 42,270 applications and a year-on-year growth of 6.5 per cent as businesses resolved to protect their brands despite last year's shaky economic situation, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) reported today.
The US Commerce Department National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has cancelled its request for proposal for the management of the internet root zone file, a core piece of infrastructure for the global domain name system (DNS) that helps users to navigate the net.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) this week held a public hearing on a German case involving software companies Oracle and UsedSoft, the second step to a ruling that could potentially set new rules for buying and downloading software on the internet.
A new paper from a Yale Law lecturer has outlined some general principles that governments must consider when imposing liability for internet intermediaries amid the lack of an international law covering online third-party liability.
A collegium of scientists, philosophers and former heads of state launched an appeal yesterday in Geneva for world governance they called "Global Solidarity, Global Responsibility."
The District Court of Berlin, Germany, yesterday ruled that user rights were violated by several parts of social media site Facebook's general terms and conditions and by its "friendfinder" feature. With regard to copyright law, the automatic worldwide exploitation right granted by users clicking off the terms and conditions was invalid, the court ruled.
A recent study has proposed at least two measures to address the gnawing problems in Europe's copyright levy system, which is being implemented differently in 22 countries in the region.
A United States congressional representative has posted the text of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) to the internet and is calling for public comments out of the fear that the agreement will harm the open internet.
The number of cybersquatting cases filed with the arbitration body of the World Intellectual Property Organization reached a record high in 2011 with 2,764 cases filed by trademark owners, the UN agency reported today. WIPO also expressed alarm over the potential impact on cybersquatting of a move underway to add more generic domain names to the internet.