Original news and analysis on international IP policy
World Trade Organization negotiations to establish a multilateral register of geographical indications continue to be stalled over whether talks should apply only to wines and spirits as mandated, or can extend to other products and include talks on disclosure of origin in genetic material, the negotiations chair reported to the WTO Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) today. He suggested a slightly different approach in the coming year.
A happy mood was in order at the close of a World Intellectual Property Organization meeting on the protection of product names indicating their origin, particular qualities and reputation. Geographical indications are being considered for the same recognition and protection as appellations of origin through the revision of a current international instrument.
There has been a tidal wave of severe criticism of the South African government’s proposed legislation to provide for protection for traditional knowledge in domestic South African law, writes Prof. Owen Dean. Now, the criticism seems to align with accepted international views.
Preliminary findings of a survey aimed at mapping the current prevailing ideas on intellectual property confirmed recognised trends that academics and intergovernmental IP professionals look more favourably on weaker IP protection, and traditional North-South differences toward IP rights are becoming less clear cut. It also found that policymakers tend to rely heavily on statistics from industry to help them with their decisions, whether reliable or not.
Groups representing European publishers, writers and collective management organisations are urging the European Commission to support their interests as it considers initiatives on copyright policy this week. The groups asked the Commission to back stronger copyright and resist calls for greater exceptions and limitations to copyright.
During the joint news conference held in Paris on 27 November by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, Medvedev was asked a question of legislative scrutiny with regard to internet regulation in Russia. In his reply, the Russian prime minister admitted that the current legislation regulating the internet is “imperfect” and called upon the international community to “consider parameters to regulate the operation of the internet on the national or international level.”
European Union lawmakers will vote soon on a non-binding measure aimed at protecting genetic resources and fighting biopiracy, or misappropriation. Despite the critical importance of these issues, efforts to draw the European Parliament's attention to the resolution have been difficult and its outcome is less than clear, its author says.
Criminal sanctions for intellectual property rights infringement are to be dropped from the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), according to a set of documents leaked by Montreal daily La Presse.
The first meeting of the World Health Organization mechanism intended to promote the prevention and control of “substandard/spurious/falsely-labelled/falsified/counterfeit” (SSFFC) medical products is being called a success. Member states agreed on a work plan that focuses on strengthening regulatory capacities and decided to form a steering committee to monitor country compliance to the plan.
The World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement Body yesterday heard arguments by parties in a dispute about Australia's new public health law requiring tobacco imports to be in plain packaging as a way to discourage tobacco use. Honduras presented a challenge to the Australian law, saying it is not in line with WTO rules on intellectual property rights, while Australia said it is a "sound, well-considered" action in the name of public health.
The Philippine Senate, the upper house of the country's bicameral congress, has approved a bill that seeks to put teeth into its copyright law as the island nation fights a bad reputation as one of the Asian states with high piracy rates. But it also seeks to protect fair use of copyrighted material.
US voters returned President Obama for four more years, and kept his party's dominance of the US Senate as well as the opposition party's dominance of the House of Representatives. While the Obama administration has generally allied itself with copyright interests, some see the possibility of a reversal in the US Congress of a trend toward stronger copyright protection.