Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The World Trade Organization said today that momentum continues to build among member states to accept a public health amendment to the WTO intellectual property rights agreement, as three more countries adopted it in the past week.
The United States government has increasingly engaged India on intellectual property rights and other trade issues in recent years, and US negotiators are under still more pressure to include industry in this engagement and deliver more results, a recent letter from 14 members of the US Congress shows.
The Obama administration last week published a draft software source code policy that requires all government agencies to publish their custom-build software as free software for public use, according to the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).
A new UN report provides significant detail on the increasing flows of cultural trade worldwide. On intellectual property rights, the report appears to primarily examine copyright as a form of revenue generation.
Two key senators today released dozens of comments they received in response to their report on the medicine Sovaldi (and its follow-on Harvoni), whose extreme high prices sparked a debate over pharmaceutical pricing that has created momentum for policy changes.
Today, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, Doctors Without Borders) filed a patent opposition against Pfizer’s vaccine for pneumonia in India.
Governments gathered at the 55th meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in Marrakesh this week have agreed to not object to the final proposal on enhancing ICANN accountability. By the move, the governments cleared the way to allow a potential handover of the management of the central root zone of the domain name system and other core databases to ICANN from the United States Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).
The United Nations Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines is holding a global dialogue this month, attended by governments, civil society, industry and academia, to discuss potential solutions to promote innovation and at the same time increase access to medicines. The first public dialogue session is this week, on 10 March in London.
The findings, conclusions and preliminary recommendations of a European Commission initiative on the conservation and sustainable use of genetic diversity are to be presented in June, the Commission has announced.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, today issued a statement urged United States law enforcement authorities to exercise caution in their legal fight against Apple computer company, saying it could have "extremely damaging implications for the human rights of many millions of people, including their physical and financial security."
The World Health Organization has announced it will hold a closed-door, three-day consultation with key stakeholders next week in Geneva to discuss the current status of clinical research into the Zika virus.
The government of Honduras has committed to a work plan for protecting intellectual property rights that includes recognition of food names considered generic by the United States such as "parmesano" (parmesan), provolone and bologna, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced today. Other commitments include signal piracy related to cable and satellite, and a customs trademark registry.