Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Pressed to come up with solutions to eliminate the deficit of a World Intellectual Property Organization treaty protecting appellations of origins, members reached into their pocket and came up with close to two-thirds of the needed sum of US$1.5 million.
It’s early February in Tchaourou district, Borgou in Benin, and a pregnant woman is admitted to hospital. Her premature baby is born by caesarean section but she dies a day later on February 12th. It turns out she had Lassa fever, a deadly viral haemorrhagic disease. But that’s only discovered after the baby is discharged from hospital and taken to northern Togo. The newborn also becomes ill and is taken to hospital for treatment.
Establishing a work programme on geographical indications at the World Intellectual Property Organization last week proved elusive. A tentative text and time frame by the chair of the committee on trademark and geographical indications (GIs) issued on the last day of the committee did not meet the approval of some member states. The committee did agree on a set of tasks for the WIPO secretariat on the protection of country names against registration as trademarks, and on the protection of new technological designs, such as icons and type fonts.
The Internet of Things (IoT), which will connect billions of devices in coming years, may offer incredible opportunities for businesses and consumers but it also raises significant intellectual property issues, IP lawyers, mobile operators and others say. One key question is whether patenting and licensing strategies will have to change to adapt to the myriad standards being developed and patents being sought for IoT products and services, and for the coming rollout of 5G technologies.
Legislation authorising the president to appoint the Register of Copyright in the United States Copyright Office is working its way through Congress. The “Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act” garnered strong bipartisan support in the House of Representatives Judiciary…
NEW DELHI, India -- Biopiracy is ongoing in many developing countries, and as long as there are no international obligations for patent applicants to disclose the origin of the genetic resources or traditional knowledge they use, the issue will endure, according to speakers at a recent conference in New Delhi. The broken conversation at the World Trade Organization needs to be rekindled so that an international regime of protection is set up, they said.
The situation with IP rights in Russia is steadily deteriorating, which is mainly due to the recently imposed restrictions for foreign biopharmaceutical companies to participate in public procurement procedures in Russia, the encouragement of parallel imports, as well as the increased consumption of pirated software, according to recent statements of the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade and local analysts in the field of IP protection.
What can you do if you are a country and a private company has registered your name as a trademark, preventing even your own companies from using your name? The issue is expected to be discussed at next week’s World Intellectual Property Organization's committee on trademarks. The meeting also includes a special session illustrating practices of national and regional protection of geographical indications. However, the question remains whether or not delegates will discuss a draft treaty text on industrial designs, after that conversation was pushed back in the fall.
After the announcement in December of a record US$75 billion commitment to its International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank Group said today that this commitment was both historic in terms of value, and also a sign of a paradigm change, including the raising of funds from capital markets.
A recent Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruling relating to TV internet broadcasts from the UK underscores tight restrictions in place for content streaming in the European Union (EU), legal scholars say.
It’s a question of when, not if, that China will overtake the United Sates as the largest user of international patent systems, says the World Intellectual Property Organization, which has also announced a record number of “cybersquatting” cases.
Under Donald Trump, the United States has adopted new, protectionist policies. “America first,” the President has repeatedly and loudly declared. It appears, however, that the US Supreme Court didn’t get the memo. The Court, in a recent patent law case, sided with foreign companies and consumers, at the expense of US patent owners. The unanimous ruling protects international supply chains instead of domestic US manufacturing.