Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The Intellectual Property Watch Monthly Edition features top news on international IP policymaking, the latest on who is coming and going in the international IP community, news briefs and more. The August/September edition is now available for subscribers at: http://www.ip-watch.org/user/newsletter.
A group of policymakers and other experts met this month in Geneva to discuss counterfeit and unsafe products and wrestled with possible balanced solutions to the problem. The event was hosted by the United States mission and supported by the US Chamber of Commerce. It included US Ambassador to the UN Betty E. King, among dozens of others.
As the jobless rate remain high and budgets tight, United States policymakers increasingly are looking for ways to boost domestic innovation in order to create new jobs and boost the economy. One such bill to be announced tomorrow, called the "Strategic Manufacturing & Job Repatriation Act" aims to develop a national manufacturing strategy to create American jobs, including by lowering access to early patent applications and prioritising university patents.
China’s government says it is acting in the best interests of its citizens. It is regulating the internet in order to protect its people from pornography and other objectionable content. Critics, however, assert that China is guilty of wide-ranging censorship, drastically limiting what mainland residents can see, hear and say online. Moreover, according to a growing chorus, this online censorship violates World Trade Organization rules.
The World Health Organisation is following a complicated timeline for new mandates on combating fake medicines, creating alternative financing mechanisms for research and development on neglected diseases, and improving pandemic influenza preparedness.
Key international agencies for health, trade and intellectual property on Friday jointly organised a symposium on access to medicines in an effort to gather information and expertise as a basis of a collaborative response to the challenges of public health.
Innovation is a key factor in economic growth but is not only about research as it is a system with many different interacting parts including R&D as one of those elements, a senior developed nations group representative said this week. Governments need to promote policies that integrate the cross-cutting nature of innovation and favour evidence based decision making, he said.
The Intellectual Property Watch Monthly Edition features top news on international IP policymaking, the latest on who is coming and going in the international IP community, news briefs and more. The July edition is now available for subscribers at: http://www.ip-watch.org/user/newsletter.
Many of the 11 negotiating partners of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) for years have underlined that the new anti-counterfeiting and anti-piracy agreement will not change their national laws, with the United States and the European Union especially firm on this point. Yet the Washington, DC-based Intellectual Property Owners' Association (IPO) in a recent letter, here,
to the US Trade Representative stated concern that ACTA “potentially change(s) United States law by transforming what are the commonly occurring non-counterfeit-types of civil action infringements into activity that is to be punished under federal criminal law.”
Filing of financial patents seems to be on a parallel upward trend with litigation in the United States, with large companies being prime targets, and individual or small entities owning the patents, according to a well-known US economist. This could be the consequence of low quality patents being granted, he said.