Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The Intellectual Property Exchange International Inc. (IPXI), the world’s first financial exchange that facilitates non-exclusive licensing and trading of IP rights, will start offering a licence contract in June.
The Association for Plant Breeding for the Benefit of Society (APBREBES) announced that its website is now online and its first newsletter has been issued.
Despite increased economic growth over the past decade, Africa will not reach some of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets set forth in 2000 by the United Nations, including halving poverty by 2015, according to a UN report released yesterday.
The International Publishers Association (IPA) has published a paper that raises questions about the quality, sustainability, and public funding of Open Educational Resources (OER).
Wrapping up one day early, the 66th World Health Assembly adopted a range of public health resolutions and decisions, some with key intellectual property implications, including a decision to convene a technical meeting on new public health R&D projects, a compromise on advancing the poor quality medicines mechanism, and resolutions on both neglected tropical diseases and noncommunicable diseases. Importantly, the novel coronavirus situation drew attention to WHO’s progress in pandemic influenza preparedness.
Daniela Bagozzi writes: Ten years of efforts in treatment for priority diseases has yielded impressive results both in terms of lives and dollars saved. To maintain progress in a volatile and financially tight environment countries and the international community will need to increase pressure on quality and healthy generic competition.
Over the past week or so, least-developed country (LDC) members of the World Trade Organization have held their own in a closed room with the world’s biggest economies as they worked out details of a request by the LDCs to extend the deadline by which they must enforce WTO intellectual property rules.
"Bad Science" adversary and journalist, Dr Ben Goldacre, this week challenged WHO Director of Ethics and Social Determinants of Health, Dr Rüdiger Krech, on his understanding of published evidence.
The issue of access to medicines is on the agenda at this week’s World Health Assembly (WHA) and public health advocates are seeking greater clarity and detail about the latest member state effort to address failings in the global system of research and development for medical products.
The European Patent Office is continuing to grant patents on conventional plants despite demands from the European Parliament and the German Parliament that the patent office refrain from granting such patents, the coalition of non-governmental organisations called "No patents on seeds" said in a release.
Members of all political party groups in the European Parliament in a debate in Strasbourg yesterday asked the European Commission to scrap several conditions demanded by the European Union and other Western countries in the World Intellectual Property Organization negotiations for the draft treaty on copyright exceptions for the blind and visually impaired.
The World Intellectual Property Organization training arm has been undergoing an external assessment which was presented to member states during the organisation's committee on development last week.