Original news and analysis on international IP policy
NEW YORK - Musicians, songwriters, and producers recently gathered at a World Intellectual Property Organization event here and gave a stark depiction of a broken system that is not working for them financially, putting the very future of music-making at risk.
The ambassadors of all but two members of a 28-member World Intellectual Property Organization-administered treaty protecting appellations of origin said in a letter yesterday that international law requires that only treaty members participate in next week's negotiations to add geographical indications to the treaty.
During a press briefing today the United States said they still have hope that the 28 members of a World Intellectual Property Organization-administered treaty will let the whole WIPO membership participate in next week's negotiations to amend that treaty. It said that the potential new treaty protecting appellations of origins and set to include geographical indications can impact the economies of many non-member countries.
The UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, Farida Shaheed, yesterday gave a presentation to the Legal Committee of the European Parliament, which currently is reviewing the EU Copyright Directive.
Today, the European Commission released details about its plans to create a Digital Single Market, with a set of actions to be delivered by the end of next year. The plan includes a competition inquiry of the European e-commerce sector launched today, and a commitment to change the European copyright law starting this year.
Both radical civil society organizations and mainstream defenders of the status quo agree that the free and open internet is threatened: see for example the Delhi Declaration, Bob Hinden’s 2014 Year End Thoughts, and Kathy Brown’s March 2015 statement at a UNESCO conference. The threats include government censorship and mass surveillance, but also the failure of governments to control rampant industry concentration and commercial exploitation of personal data, which increasingly takes the form of providing “free” services in exchange for personal information that is resold at a profit, or used to provide targeted advertising, also at a profit, Richard Hill writes in a review of the new book, The Real Cyber War: The Political Economy of Internet Freedom.
As the World Intellectual Property Organization prepares to host high-level negotiations next week to amend an agreement protecting appellations of origins to include geographical indications, a number of WIPO member states are asking that the whole WIPO membership be allowed to participate on an equal footing to the negotiations, not only the 28 members of the treaty.
From 8-22 May, US online search giant Google will open a streamlined portal for patent owners to let Google know about patents they are willing to sell at a price they set.
Least developed countries (LDCs) at the World Trade Organization have requested that a waiver allowing them to not enforce intellectual property rights on pharmaceutical products be extended beyond its deadline of 1 January 2016. The brand pharmaceutical industry this week stated that it supports access to medicines for LDCs but does not see the need for this extension as LDCs already benefit from a WTO waiver on all products until 2021.
In Chile, pharmaceutical patents are almost exclusively the domain of foreign companies. Only a subset of drugs is protected by patents, while a much larger number of products is protected by trademarks, a study finds, offering for the first time empirical evidence on the use of primary and secondary patents in Chile.
Darren Walker is president of the Ford Foundation, one of the largest and historically most influential private philanthropies in the United States, dedicated to human welfare worldwide. Among its areas of focus are programs on freedom of expression and internet rights, extremely timely given current national and global events. Ford, along with four other leading foundations, and leaders from government, business and the technology community recently announced NetGain, a partnership to “spark the next generation of innovation for social change and progress.” Intellectual Property Watch’s William New recently interviewed Darren Walker on his vision for the foundation, internet governance, and the world at large.
South Africa’s new indigenous knowledge systems legislation is being cautiously welcomed by commentators, expressing both hopes and concerns. And some are tying it to other intellectual property legislation in the country.