Original news and analysis on international IP policy
By Tatum Anderson for Intellectual Property Watch Some of the biggest names in the mobile phone industry have joined forces to share intellectual property but have stopped short of establishing the mobile industry’s first patent cooperative, known as a patent…
By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch
The European Parliament has voted against criminalising parallel imports of goods in the proposed European Union directive on criminal measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPRED2). Yet these re-imports of products marketed by rights holders in other countries may be criminalised if Parliament does not change a "cleaned-up" draft text of the directive that has quietly emerged, sources say.
The directive is a follow-up to the IP Enforcement Directive (2004/48/EC, IPRED1) passed by the EU in 2004 and will add criminal sanctions against piracy and counterfeiting of a commercial scale. Both IPRED1 and IPRED2 brought about fierce debates about how far protection of intellectual property should go in Europe.
By William New Intellectual property issues may not be ‘make-or-break’ for the current round of trade-liberalisation negotiations at the World Trade Organization, but they continue to be a factor. At last week’s opening to the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), WTO…
By Dugie Standeford for Intellectual Property Watch Well-loved American performers, members of Congress and the US Register of Copyrights squared off Tuesday against the country’s powerful broadcast lobby in a bid to change US copyright law to reward artists for…
By William New The World Intellectual Property Organization may be the biggest United Nations agency in Geneva working on IP issues, but another body also has taken up the effort. And in a recent conference held by the UN Economic…
By William New The growing problem of intellectual property rights piracy and counterfeiting requires global cooperation, and the European Union has elevated its focus on the issue at every policy level, an EU official told a recent intergovernmental gathering discussing…
By William New Advanced European countries are increasingly looking for channels to school their neighbours and worldwide free-trade agreement partners on the enforcement of western-style intellectual property rights. And in order to get them to bite, officials are promoting the…
By William New The Intellectual Property Owners’ Association, a Washington, DC industry association, has posted on its website a side-by-side comparison of the two bills to reform US patent law currently advancing in the US Congress. Both bills moved at…
By Dugie Standeford for Intellectual Property Watch As the “Simpsons Movie” rolls out on silver screens across the United States and Europe, word comes that its maker, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, has won the rights to the domain name…
Par Tove Iren S. Gerhardsen Après d’intenses négociations de dernière minute, un comité de l’Organisation mondiale de la propriété intellectuelle (OMPI) a décidé de renouveler son mandat actuel, en accordant davantage d’importance à la direction qu’il souhaite donner à ses…