Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The United Kingdom Parliament late last night approved a controversial digital economy bill that allows the court to impose obligations on internet service providers to limit internet access of its users deemed to have infringed online copyrights.
The truth about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is different depending on which side you are on.
The UN Convention on Biological Diversity last month hailed Cali, Colombia as the birthplace of a protocol they hope will lead to an international regime on access and benefit-sharing by their October 2010 deadline. But, while it is clear the late March negotiation in Cali brought significant progress, participants reported difficult disagreements and in the final days, signs that there is yet more work to be done.
A new accord designed to bolster political and economic ties between the European Union and Central America could result in greater seizures of medicines whenever pharmaceutical companies allege that their patents have been infringed, public health advocates have warned.
Work to address counterfeit medicines continues at the World Health Organization, but a meeting late last week revealed ongoing concerns about the way it is being conducted.
The World Health Organization’s handling of the recent pandemic influenza outbreak will be examined by an independent panel of experts beginning in April. Meanwhile, new reports from the WHO are available on influenza and on intellectual property and innovation.
“No changes in domestic” law promised the partners currently negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. A leaked 56-page recent consolidated version of the much-discussed agreement shows that this might not be completely true. The draft version with a lot of bracketed text in it shows that some countries are more open about the potential need to change their domestic laws than others.
The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), an intergovernmental agency that provides technical advice and guidelines for the identification and protection of new plants, will have a new leader for the first time in a decade, it was decided Friday.
The expansion of internet domain names as proposed is worrying to trademark owners as a significant number cybersquatting cases continue to be filed in the World Intellectual Property Organization dispute resolution system, WIPO said this week. Meanwhile internet intermediaries should play a bigger role in the fight against trademark infringement, WIPO officials said.
Delegates to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity today begin the last formal meeting before a late-2010 deadline to negotiate an agreement ensuring fair and equitable access to and benefits from the world’s scarce biological resources.
Europe will request the publication of the current drafts for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) at the next ACTA negotiating meeting in New Zealand in April, EU trade official Luc Devigne said today.
Speaking at the third EU stakeholder meeting on the hotly debated ACTA today in Brussels, Devigne also said there is also a meeting with civil society planned to take place alongside the New Zealand round.
China on Friday briefed the World Trade Organization on improvements in its intellectual property rights enforcement needed to bring it into compliance with a dispute settlement decision made last year.