Original news and analysis on international IP policy
This week, Jamaica tabled a proposal at the World Intellectual Property Organization for a non-binding instrument that would provide a guideline on the protection of country names against misleading trademarks for intellectual property offices and trademark practitioners. The proposal was received with interest by some member states while others, like the United States and South Africa, raised strong concerns.
The rise of knowledge societies leads to the emergence of new conflicts initiated by stakeholders who do not come from the closed world of intellectual property, but rather from the general civil society. This reflects the growing importance of IP in the international economy, says a recent book.
European Patent Office (EPO) employees on 13 March approved seven office-wide strike days, starting on 21 March. The move follows an increasingly tense stand-off between the Staff Union of the European Patent Office (SUEPO) and President Benoît Battistelli over, as a union document put it, timely access to justice, freedom of speech and freedom of association. The deteriorating relationship between employees and office officials prompted one French lawmaker to ask government ministers to rethink their country's support for Battistelli's reappointment. If unresolved, the labour issues could end up subjecting the EPO to closer scrutiny as it prepares to administer the EU unitary patent, one source close to the situation said.
The issue of medicines access for low-income people in developing countries has been of major concern to global health policymakers for years. A key issue is the inability of northern pharmaceutical producers to develop and distribute affordable medicines and recover their research and development costs.
As part of the effort to address this, a non-governmental group was formed in coordination with industry and other stakeholders to develop an index to rate companies’ efforts to ameliorate the situation.
Julia Fraser for Intellectual Property Watch recently sat down with Hans Hogerzeil, a former senior World Health Organization official and a top strategist for the Access to Medicine Index, to discuss the index’s impact, independence and the future.
The UN World Intellectual Property Organization today announced its concern over the effect on trademark protection of the current launch of over 1,000 new internet domains by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
Amid intensifying competition in the global economy, companies rely more heavily than ever on the advantages of trade secrets. This critical proprietary information includes, for example, market research, product plans, unique formulas and manufacturing methods, computer code and customer data - knowledge that companies build through years of hard work, experience and investment, writes Pamela Passman.
An innovative South African start-up is offering local university students a way around buying cheap pirated books with a legal print-on-demand service that slashes the price of expensive academic textbooks.
The Obama administration has announced a decision to make a last step towards completing privatisation of internet core infrastructure oversight, namely the central root zone of the domain name system. But it is not clear what this will mean for international efforts to increase intergovernmental control over the internet.
The European Parliament is scheduled to vote on 3 April on amended draft legislation that would oblige pharmaceutical companies to publish all clinical trial data in a publicly accessible database.
Japanese small and medium-sized venture companies and micro enterprises will receive a reduction on patent filing costs under the national "Industrial Competitiveness Enhancement Act" as of 1 April.
KAMPALA - In the western terrains of Uganda, in a refugee camp, Dr. Moses Kizza Musaazi invented and is running a simple but ingenious scheme. Making environmentally friendly sanitary pads out of papyrus reeds. The pads, MakaPads sanitary pads, are the only trademarked biodegradable sanitary pads made in Africa. Dr. Musaazi developed the idea and technique while looking for a way to help school-going girls.
A huge majority of the European Parliament today called for a stop to mass surveillance and a digital "New Deal" to enpower European citizens and companies following a six-month inquiry into the US National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence service surveillance programmes by the Parliamen's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.