Original news and analysis on international IP policy
A panel addressing negotiators this week at the World Intellectual Property Organization asserted the property rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities over traditional knowledge and genetic resources and called on delegates to draft an international instrument compliant with their internationally recognised rights.
World Intellectual Property Organization member countries are working to get past their differences this week toward agreement on a way to protect genetic resources from biopiracy. A new document shows focus on misappropriation as a policy objective, and that a bridge still needs to be found on the issue of mandatory disclosure of origin in patent applications.
The World Intellectual Property Organization committee working on ways to protect genetic resources and traditional knowledge opened a weeklong meeting yesterday by gathering country ambassadors to try to inject momentum into discussions. But after the session, it appeared that many delegations had restated known positions. Everybody seemed to agree on broad goals, but not on the way to reach them.
32 farmer, breeder and environmental organisations from 26 countries gathered by the “no-patents-on-seeds” alliance today filed an opposition against a patent on an insect-resistant sweet pepper at the European Patent Office in Munich.
The Quaker UN Office in Geneva has announced two new publications on intellectual property, agriculture, food and biological diversity.
Participants at a recent conference in South Africa offered insights and some optimism about prospects for local communities to exploit their traditional knowledge to help their economies while at the same time protecting that knowledge.
Looking back on 2013, the list of the most-viewed stories on the Intellectual Property Watch website shows that reporting on activities in India, especially related to patents and public health, continued to draw the most attention. Other top stories were the Marrakesh Treaty on copyright exceptions for blind readers, legal cases involving patents on seeds and on plant and human genes, the election for World Intellectual Property Organization director general, free-trade agreements (including the Wikileaks leak of the IP chapter of the Trans-Atlantic Partnership agreement), Russian copyrights, and 3D printing.
An upcoming conference in Mumbai, India will look at patent laws related to the pharmaceutical and biopharma industries regionally and internationally.
CPhI's 3rd Annual Pharma IPR 2014, taking place from 26-28 February, is a targeted conference focusing on patent related matters for pharma and biopharma industry across the globe. It is intended to provide an ideal learning and networking platform where techno-legal experts from patent law firms across the globe share an update on patent regimes, changes in patent laws, and enforceability of patent laws in different regions with the pharma and biopharma companies.
The conference agenda will cover most debated subjects like: inter-partes review; one year after the implementation of the America Invents Act; reverse payments settlements cases; current implementation of the Unitary Patent System in the EU; and formulating strategies to introduce generic products in international markets.
The programme will cover patent laws of over 13 regions including the US, EU, Japan, Mexico, Canada, India, South East Asia, and Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) countries.
Click here to view the region-wise agenda.
Free download for IP-Watch Readers! Click here to view presentations from 2013!
The Office of the United States Trade Representative will again make intellectual property rights a top priority in trade relations with China in 2014, and will not hesitate to take actions such as to bring World Trade Organization dispute settlement cases as needed, USTR has said.
The Africa Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) this week was expected to consider a proposal to move toward a biotechnology-friendly future, but small farmers say the current proposal will damage their ability to exist in the those countries.
The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) yesterday issued a statement on the status of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement talks on intellectual property rights and public health, suggesting that it has put forward new ideas on the issue. The statement is worded to reflect that USTR has heard the concerns of other governments and of public health advocates, but it's unclear if those groups will accept it.
A collective civil society group has raised concerns about a draft Africa Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) plant variety protection law, which is based on the 1991 version of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV). The draft law, which may come up for adoption in November, would criminalise farmers' rights and undermine the seed systems in Africa, they said.