Original news and analysis on international IP policy
President Obama is being pushed to sign into a law a bill passed by the United States Congress that would create six pilot programmes nationwide aimed at increasing expertise among district court judges in dealing with patents. Proponents consider the bill help against non-producing, patent owning companies that make a business of suing to defend the patents they own.
Two sides of the ongoing struggle to balance stronger copyright protection and access to knowledge in the United States are re-arming themselves for battle in 2011. By the looks of it, it could be a litigious New Year.
The United States State Department today released information about 15 projects worldwide this year aimed at training officials and prosecutors in intellectual property rights protection. The full press release follows.
The World Intellectual Property Organization is headed in a controversial direction, and a focus on development at the expense of protection of intellectual property rights will mean the end of the agency, the United States Ambassador Betty King said yesterday.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office today announced that USPTO Deputy Director Sharon Barner will leave office on 14 January.
The United States Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva this week offered a frank assessment of the UN system of dealing with pandemic diseases, and defended the need for governments to negotiate in secret to work out remaining differences.
Strategies may be failing to ensure developing countries’ implementation of global trade rules for intellectual property protection does not squelch access to affordable medicines worldwide, according to a study presented this week.
The rapid pace of technology and dramatic shifts in the global economy will bring change to the multilateral structure set up after the Second World War, and these changes will affect the intellectual property system, World Intellectual Property Organization Director General Francis Gurry said this week.
Opinions were divided in a United Nations consultation yesterday in New York on enhanced cooperation of public policy issues pertaining to the internet, whether two bodies on the issue are needed.
The United Nations climate change conference closed at dawn last Saturday, with a make-do package of decisions advantageously labelled the “Cancun Agreements”. Intellectual property rights have all but disappeared from the texts as Bolivia stood alone in disagreement and was shush-gavelled.
In what may be the first legal reference to newly adopted international rules on sharing the benefits of and access to genetic resources, non-governmental groups have sent letters to top European health officials reminding them of these obligations in the context of influenza viruses and access to vaccines - a topic under debate this week at the World Health Organization.
World Trade Organization members last week agreed to work on a draft text for an international register of geographical indications for wines and spirits by April 2011. Meanwhile, the European Commission took steps last week to raise GI protection within the region.