Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The Obama administration last week published a draft software source code policy that requires all government agencies to publish their custom-build software as free software for public use, according to the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).
A new UN report provides significant detail on the increasing flows of cultural trade worldwide. On intellectual property rights, the report appears to primarily examine copyright as a form of revenue generation.
An initiative of the United Nations secretary general yesterday gathered what could be described as an assembly of many of the world’s best thinkers and practitioners on public health and intellectual property rights. Industry, activists, academics, international organisations, and possibly some governments poured out their views for nearly seven hours – at times coming to tears and tension – shepherded by an astute moderator, as they responded to the call to take a longstanding debate on medicines access and high prices to a breakthrough.
Today, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, Doctors Without Borders) filed a patent opposition against Pfizer’s vaccine for pneumonia in India.
The United Nations Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines is holding a global dialogue this month, attended by governments, civil society, industry and academia, to discuss potential solutions to promote innovation and at the same time increase access to medicines. The first public dialogue session is this week, on 10 March in London.
The 55th meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in Marrakesh this week is expected to finalise the last proposal necessary for the transition of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), a set of core functions necessary for the running of the internet.
Whether laws enforcing transparency on costs would help curb extortionate drug prices in today’s world is hardly predictable now that pharma companies and their allies are lobbying governments to scupper any rules that would require them to disclose the real R&D costs and profits of their medicines and the rationale for charging what they do, writes Daniele Dionisio.
Transitioning of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) out of the United States government - or not – is the top issue of a narrower internet governance community in 2016. Yet looming behind the many high-level government events are some more controversial topics that are attracting a wider set of stakeholders: the unresolved issues of privacy, free flow of data, surveillance and encryption, as well as the security or rather insecurity of a space of networked machines, including military machines.
Re:Route, a mapping tool that lays out the research and development (R&D) landscape of innovation and financing for medicines, has been launched by the Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM). It is a one-stop place for the alternative biomedical research and development landscape.
The “making available right,” affirmed by the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization “Internet Treaties”, gives authors the prerogative to authorise digital access to their copyrighted works “in such a way that members of the public may access these works from a place and at a time individually chosen by them.” But while United States government officials have routinely held that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which implements the treaties covers all of the conduct envisioned by the right, courts have been less consistent, the US Copyright Office said in a 23 February congressionally-ordered report that recommended no change to current law.
Managing copyright in digital musical works can be difficult because there are multiple rights holders and no standards for exchanging the massive amounts of data involved. Digital rights management services LyricFind and Rumblefish are among organisations working to streamline access to online content, company chiefs say.
Just days before the restart of negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) on 22 February in Brussels, a large coalition of non-governmental organisations led by the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) published a critical report on new proposals for the highly debated investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms. The activists called the Investment Court System (ICS) prepared by EU Commissioner Malmstroem as an alternative a mere “ISDS zombie.”