Original news and analysis on international IP policy
A leading indigenous negotiator for a UN protocol on biodiversity access and benefit sharing says the process will likely yield a highly diluted, rights-poor protocol and that Indigenous Peoples' negotiating leverage is slipping.
Member states of the UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU) today re-elected Hamadoun Touré of Mali as ITU Secretary-General of ITU for a second four-year term.
The latest draft text of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement has now been made public.
The latest text of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will be released at 4 in the afternoon, Central European Time, Intellectual Property Watch has just learned. It will be released online at the websites of the negotiating trade ministries. A…
The Internet Policy Task Force of the United States Commerce Department today issued a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) seeking comment from any interested stakeholders - including rights holders, internet service providers, and consumers - on the "protection of copyrighted works online and the relationship between copyright law and innovation in the internet economy."
The round of negotiations in Tokyo last week on the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will be the last in the several-year long process to come to a final agreement, negotiators have said. The latest text - along with highlighted issue areas on which certain countries still have reservations - will be released before the end of the week, negotiators told Intellectual Property Watch.
The United States’ search for ways to spark its job growth has led to a focus on intellectual property rights, and this week several significant developments boiled over.
The United States National Institutes of Health has become the first patent holder to join the newly created Medicines Patent Pool, a project of drug purchasing mechanism UNITAID. Public health organisations hailed the move as key step in the right direction but said there is still much work to do.
Member governments of the World Intellectual Property Organization this week set in motion negotiations that could lead to international treaties or other instruments on exceptions and limitations to copyright, the protection of traditional knowledge and folklore, and harmonisation of industrial design laws. Negotiations won’t be without difficulty, however.
The adoption of 1997 landmark environmental agreement the Kyoto Protocol caused a surge in environmental innovation, but the countries which are innovating and the licensees of this technology are limited, finds a newly released study making use of patent data to track where technological responses to climate change are coming from as well as the licensing practices of the technology owners.
"Never did I see a shred of evidence that financial profits for industry, as opposed to epidemiological and virological data, influenced WHO decisions" on a recent influenza pandemic, World Health Organization Director General Margaret Chan said today in opening remarks to the International Health Regulations Review Committee.
Can the digital environment be used in a way that promotes real human rights? A group of activists speaking yesterday alongside the ongoing UN Human Rights Council believes that it can, and provided several examples of work they are doing to make that happen.