Original news and analysis on international IP policy
By Sinfah Tunsarawuth for Intellectual Property Watch BANGKOK – Thailand’s lawmakers on Tuesday finalised a draft bill to amend its copyrights law in an effort to regulate the collecting of royalties in domestic music industry, which bill proponents say has…
By Catherine Saez How best to protect traditional knowledge, traditional cultural expressions and genetic resources against misappropriation and misuse was the main theme of a recent community consultation in the form of a roundtable organised by the World Intellectual Property…
By William New Members of the World Trade Organization on Friday continued a longstanding debate over the creation of a register for geographical indications (GIs), products whose names derive from places. Debate centred on a recent compromise proposal from European…
By Liza Porteus Viana for Intellectual Property Watch China and the United States last week held high-level discussions on a host of topics including intellectual property rights, reaching agreements to cooperate on IP rights protection, stopping counterfeit medicines and devices,…
By Kaitlin Mara for Intellectual Property Watch Two years after India’s implementation of international trade rules on intellectual property rights, a lawyers group is rekindling a decade-old push to organise India’s patent applications into an electronic database. IP law blog…
By William New
Members of the World Health Organization worked for days recently under the steady gaze of the WHO director general in an attempt to develop a new framework for the global influenza-sharing system designed as a safeguard against a pandemic.
By Catherine Saez There are considerable differences in developing countries’ implementation of the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and their use of flexibilities in it, according to speakers at a recent South Centre…
By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch The Council of Europe is deliberating on whether to negotiate a convention to protect broadcasters’ signals against piracy and thereby take up the issue from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) where negotiations…
By Dugie Standeford for Intellectual Property Watch
A bipartisan group of US legislators is calling for tougher civil and criminal penalties for copyright and trademark infringement through new legislation introduced last week. Meanwhile, the US Library of Congress Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has set royalties for satellite radio services, as webcast radio companies lobbied for rate parity.
The "Prioritising Resources and Organisation for Intellectual Property Act of 2007 (PRO IP)," introduced 5 December, would create an IP enforcement czar, establish a new IP division in the Department of Justice, and authorise the appointment of IP officers to help foreign countries combat piracy and counterfeiting.
By Kaitlin Mara for Intellectual Property Watch
NEW YORK - Verizon Wireless, in a surprise move for a company known to fiercely protect its network from outside use, announced on 27 November that it would adopt an "open-access" policy for the use of its wireless services. This means that third-party devices, including Google's still in-development mobile-phone operating system Android, will be able to use the Verizon network, and opens the way for a global expansion for the telecommunications company.
Speaking at investment bank UBS's Annual Global Media Conference in New York on 5 December, Verizon President and Chief Operating Officer Denny Strigl explained the choice.
By William New BRUSSELS – European publishers and copyright holders have a friend in European Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding, which she reinforced last week in describing efforts to push through a new bill on digital publishing copyrights. At the…
By Bruce Gain for Intellectual Property Watch
Legal experts and consumer rights groups are questioning the feasibility of measures described in an anti-piracy pact that French media groups, government officials, and Internet service providers (ISPs) announced on 23 November.
ISPs also dispute the veracity of media reports that have since claimed that access providers will begin to actively monitor and block peer-to-peer file exchanges in France.
The anti-piracy agreement describes a number of possible measures that could prevent illegal distribution of copyright-protected digital media in France.