Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Among Denmark's many priorities for its six-month presidency of the European Union which started this month are advancing intellectual property rights, international trade, research and innovation. IP issues include a unitary EU patent, trademark rules modernisation, and orphan works legislation.
This year could bring major changes in US intellectual property law. Congress and the nation’s courts will be confronting a variety of issues that have broad ramifications for copyrights, trademarks and patents. Here are some of the top developments to watch in 2012.
The next round of negotiations for a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement is expected to be held in March in Australia, but secretive intersessional meetings on a variety of topics are being held in the meantime. Meanwhile, the Canadian government is considering joining the TPP talks, and is asking for public comments on the idea by 14 February.
On the eve of the start of the application period for new generic top level domains (gTLDs) on the internet, the chair of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Steve Crocker, described the program as a "major step in the globalisation of the internet." For the first time there will be equal access and an equal invitation to users from all over the world to have generic domain names, Crocker said at the National Press Club in Washington, DC today.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is launching a large expansion of the available top-level domains on the internet on 12 January, has told international organisations the expansion will not hurt them.
A new report from the United States Department of Commerce on competitiveness and innovation details the US need to boost innovation in order to compete globally and grow the economy. But while it stresses the need for strong intellectual property rights enforcement to create high-priced monopolies as an incentive for innovation, it also acknowledges that access to inexpensive technology and ideas is key to innovation and entrepreneurship. Furthermore, it shows that the rise in IP rights in recent years has been accompanied by a drop in innovation.
The US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has announced its support for additional policies for new generic top-level domains on the internet, with conditions. The Commerce Department agency will stick to the 12 January start of the application period for new domains, but it has requested that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) take additional precautions when opening up the process.
The dates have been set for this year's high-level negotiation for a treaty on audiovisual performances at the World Intellectual Property Organization.
A "call for evidence" has been issued for an independent feasibility study on developing a Digital Copyright Exchange in the United Kingdom. Members of the "creative industries" are being asked to respond to the assertion made in a preceding study by Professor Ian Hargreaves that the current copyright licensing system is not fit for the digital age, as well as definitions used by Hargreaves.
The most-read Intellectual Property Watch stories of 2011 demonstrated the versatility and range of our readers from around the globe, from an intense focus on international and national copyright issues to bilateral and plurilateral free trade agreements, to issues in India and Brazil, patent laws, patents in agriculture, scientific knowledge, and of course, policies emerging in Geneva at the World Intellectual Property Organization, World Trade Organization, World Health Organization and elsewhere at the multilateral level. Most of all, they tell the story of the year gone by, with clear signals of what's to come in 2012.
The Geneva-based International Publishers Association today joined organisations demanding that the interim Egyptian government stop attacks on an Egyptian publisher, and uphold the internationally recognised right to freedom of opinion and expression, and freedom of assembly and association.
With a recent decision by the Agriculture and Fishery Council of the European Union, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) seems to have made a big leap forward. And with recent breakthroughs in other countries, ACTA’s final hurdle may be in the European parliaments.